Here’s What We Need to Know About Elizabeth Banks’ Husband Max Handelman
Elizabeth Banks and Max Handelman have been together for 30 years and married for 20 of them. Raising two young sons and working together every day, Banks declares, “There’s love. And there’s lust. So it’s great.”
An actor, producer, writer and director who takes on a variety of different projects—film and television, comedy and drama—Elizabeth Banks is best known as a performer who has earned three Emmy Award nominations for her recurring roles on 30 Rock and Modern Family, while also coming on strong as a respected big-screen talent in such movies as The Hunger Games series, Love & Mercy, W., and the Pitch Perfect franchise. The latter she produced to great success through her company Brownstone Productions. More on that later…
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But before all the hard work and dedication that was intrinsic to launching and maintaining her Hollywood career, Elizabeth Banks made an integral early decision on her very first day of college at the University of Pennsylvania, way back in the fall of 1992.
That was when she met a fellow student named Max Handelman…and the two immediately embarked on a romantic relationship that continues to this day.
Elizabeth Banks Met Max Handelman on Her 1st Day of College
Since then, the two were married (in 2003) and shared the birth of two sons, Felix and Magnus (born in 2011 and 2012, respectively).
Clearly, Banks and Handelman are the real deal. (Oh, and just for the sake of closure on Banks’ college years, she graduated from Penn magna cum laude.)
After college, Handelman set out for an MBA (which he earned at UCLA in 2003) while Banks made inroads into her blooming acting career, appearing in the early aughts hits Wet Hot American Summer, Seabiscuit, Spider-Man and Spider-Man 2. During the early days of their marriage, the pair’s careers took up the majority of their time: Handelman was working as an investment banker before becoming a director at News Corporation, where he helped to launch Fox Sports’ fantasy football division (and co-writing the book Why Fantasy Football Matters: (And Our Lives Do Not)). Banks, meanwhile, was hopscotching across the country making movies.
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In 2002, Banks came up with the idea that she and Handelman should form a film and television production company. Thus, the What To Expect When You’re Expecting star “dragged him into the industry” and they formed Brownstone Productions in the fall of that year.
“He worked an 80-hour week; I was traveling all the time in a career that requires me to film on location for up to six months of the year,” she said. “Forming the company really was about trying to combine our professional and personal goals.”
Banks and Handelman Started a Production Company in 2002
Brownstone is best known for producing the Pitch Perfect films as well as the hotly anticipated upcoming Pitch Perfect streaming series, Pitch Perfect: Bumper in Berlin. Banks directed the second entry in the series, Pitch Perfect 2, which is considered to be the highest-grossing musical comedy movie of all time, with a box office take of $287 million worldwide. It also marks the biggest ever opening for a first-time feature film director, and the second-largest opening for a female filmmaker.
Not surprisingly, the sequel to Pitch Perfect 2, the aptly named Pitch Perfect 3, is the second highest-grossing musical comedy of all time, ringing up $185 million around the world.
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Box office-smashing record notwithstanding, Banks considers her biggest accomplishment continues to be her thriving relationship with her husband.
“It’s the thing I’m most proud of,” she says. “I do think people grow together or they grow apart. We definitely grew together. We were constantly making decisions that kept us close.”
Bank and Handelman’s Brownstone isn’t resting its laurels on the Pitch Perfect series having stepped up to the plate with a slate of varied projects, including the science fiction thriller Surrogates with Bruce Willis, Walk of Shame starring Banks and James Marsden, and the lauded TV series Shrill starring Aidy Bryant.
Elizabeth Banks Directed Two Huge Hollywood Movies
Most recently, Brownstone produced a couple of noteworthy reboots, the first being the 2019 version of Charlie Angels, directed by Banks and starring Kristen Stewart, followed by that same year’s reboot of the 1983 trivia-based TV gameshow Press Your Luck, which Brownstone transformed into an even more popular primetime program.
The original daytime version of the show ran for three seasons until 1986, while the new version is currently in the middle of the fourth season. One reason that the reboot is doing so well is undoubtedly the presence of the lively and encouraging Elizabeth Banks as its host!
Yes, Banks is one of the show’s producers and knows that her hosting lends itself to the bottom line, but she is also happy to offer another very positive reason that she’s on board with being on-camera:
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“I’m on Press Your Luck because I love that job,” says Banks. “It’s fun to change people’s lives with money.”
Well, hallelujah to that! And that coming from the show’s producer, no less!
Brownstone has some dozen films in some form of development or production, among them the thriller Cocaine Bear, directed by Banks and in currently in post-production, and the romantic comedies Tink and Queen for a Day. Also in development is the horror-thriller The Invisible Woman, which Banks is lined up to direct and star in.
Brownstone also currently produces a pair of podcasts, both hosted by Banks: My Body, My Podcast, a wellness/sex/motherhood-themed program; and the upcoming scripted ensemble comedy Fugly.
Banks and Handelman Have a Number of Films on Their Slate
Handelman is a co-producer on all the projects, of course, and the couple’s young children can be considered part of the team, as well. At least when it comes to The Invisible Woman, as Banks established during the making of Charlie’s Angels that she has a very open policy about parenting on her set and thinks it’s okay to bring one’s children to work, as it were.
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“We should be having whole lives – I don’t need to separate my work from my kids as much as I used to. There’s an old stigma about that,” Banks insists. “For me, I throw all the rules out and invite my kids into my work life, because I want to be with my kids and I want to do great work.”
So it looks like a lot of fine decisions have been made during the course of Banks and Handelman’s three decades together, resulting in an active family, thriving careers and a life that finds them working daily with their very favorite people: each other.
“We have always dreamed about our life together. And we work together every day, and we have a lot of respect for each other on every level, says Banks. “And then there’s love. And then there’s lust. So it’s great.”
