'Hunger Games' Is 'Very Emotional,' Elizabeth Banks Says

It's hard not to love Elizabeth Banks. She's smart, funny, pretty, makes great choices with her roles in film and television and just seems like an all-around great person. And although we've been fans of Banks' work for years, it's her role as Effie Trinkett in "The Hunger Games" that has us almost bouncing off the walls with excitement.

When MTV News caught up with Banks recently, we asked what scenes she's most looking forward to see on the big screen when the film opens March 23.

"I have not seen much of the arena, so I'm excited to see the actual Games. It's very emotional. We really become very attached to the characters, even Cato and Thresh, kind of the bad guys of the book," Banks said. "We really are attached to everybody's journey, and so I'm really excited to see how that all plays out."

Banks said that, for her part, the Reaping was the most challenging and fulfilling sequence to shoot.

"The Reaping is amazing. We get so see a heroine step forward and show herself for the first time and come to life, and it was a really remarkable scene to shoot. It was difficult to shoot under insane conditions, about 105 degrees the couple days we shot it. We had all these young kids there dropping like flies," Banks recalled. "It was madness, and it's also the only time we spend in District 12."

Banks added that the best way to take the edge off the extreme temperatures and conditions during the filming of the Reaping was to lighten the mood between takes.

"I think whenever it's difficult, one of my favorite ways to deal with it is to joke around. We take the work seriously, but we try not to take ourselves too seriously. Woody [Harrelson] is a great partner in crime," she said of her humorous co-star. "He tells really off-color jokes and is fantastically self-deprecating and fun to be around."

Check out everything we've got on "The Hunger Games."

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