Elizabeth Banks Didn‘t Think She'd Marry Max Handelman When She Met Him at 18

Elle

20-06-2025

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Actress and producer Elizabeth Banks has been with her husband Max Handelman for over 30 years, and her career in Hollywood would look totally different without him. They've each brought their unique skills and perspectives to not only marriage but a business partnership that has created some of the silver screen's greatest hits in the last decade. And they love talking about it.
Here's everything to know about Max Handelman and his relationship with Banks, as well as all their projects together.
Handelman and Banks have been living parallel lives since college, so a lot of the producer's history has been influenced by his wife. Handelman grew up in Portland, Oregon, where he graduated from Catlin Gabel High School. In 1991, Handelman headed to the University of Pennsylvania, where he studied communications, per a 2020 interview with Portland Monthly. They met and immediately connected. Following graduation, Banks moved to New York to pursue acting, and he went right along with her, where he first began a career as an investment banker.
When they headed to the West Coast, Handelman continued his education at the Anderson School of Management at the University of California, where he received his MBA. The man has a lot of talents, and began a new venture as a sportswriter. He co-wrote a book published in 2006 called Why Fantasy Football Matters: (And Our Lives Do Not).
In 2002, Banks told Porter that she 'dragged him' into filmmaking, forming their production company, Brownstone Productions.
'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,' Banks said. 'Forming the company really was about trying to combine our professional and personal goals.'
It made sense for them to work together instead of apart. Banks told The Hollywood Reporter in June 2019, 'When we were looking at how to make a life together, I felt like he was a real bloodhound for material and had a really good eye for things.'
And the experience of writing his book is in part what led to the wildly successful Pitch Perfect films. In 2015, Banks told NPR in an interview that Handelman's book agent sent him and Banks a proposal for a book about a cappella groups by Mickey Rapkin, which the first film was eventually based on.
She explained, 'When we first read the book proposal, we thought, 'Wow, this is a really fun group of oddballs who like to make music with their mouths. This could be a fun idea.''
Aside from Pitch Perfect and Pitch Perfect 2, Handelman has produced Surrogates, The Most Hated Woman in America, Shrill, 2019's Charlie's Angels, Cocaine Bear, and Bottoms.
In 2016, Banks told Vanity Fair, 'We have always made decisions that kept us together as a couple. We like working together. We're good at working together.'
That same year, she told the Producers Guild of America, 'We're pretty yin and yang,' describing Handelman as 'very diplomatic and business-minded and calm' and herself as 'fiery' and 'emotional.'
Banks said that they met on her first day of college during a 2012 Conan interview.
'He was wearing a vest with no shirt,' she quipped. 'To show off his sexy physique back in the day. He looked exactly like Jason Priestly from 90210, c'mon.'
Banks continued, 'I dated the same guy all throughout high school, and I basically—and he knows this so, this is no surprise to him—cheated on him with my now-husband.'
Their first date was at a jazz club, which Banks described as 'the greatest date' of her life.
In a 2022, episode of the Call Her Daddy podcast, Banks went into more detail about meeting Handelman at a frat party.
'The main thing I remember is that he was not that interested in me. He would say otherwise, but he was pursuing me a little bit. I was pursuing him for sure, and he was also pursuing this really cute girl named Kate,' Banks revealed.
She says she tried to give Handelman her phone number, but he told her he didn't have a phone, which was actually true.
But she replied, ''If you don't want my number, dude, you can just say so. Don't pretend you have, like, no ability to ever figure out how to call me. There are phones in this world. You can find a phone if you care.'
They stayed together through college and married about a decade later. Banks told Allure in 2015 that she didn't start out a relationship with Handelman with that intention, it's just how it worked out.
'I didn't meet my husband and think, 'I've met the man I'm going to marry,'' Banks explained. 'I was like, He's cute. I'll fuck him, because I'm 18 and in college.'
She added, 'Really, what happened was I've never met anyone that I liked more. In the early years, did I have crushes or little interests here and there? I know my husband did, and so did I, but we stayed together. We still to this day take the long view.'
Their wedding was on July 5, 2003, and held at the Greystone Mansion in Beverly Hills, InStyle reported.
The couple welcomed their son Felix via surrogate in 2011 and then their second child, Magnus Mitchell, in 2012, also via surrogate. On Call Her Daddy, Banks discussed her fertility struggles and how she talks about surrogacy with her sons.
'I've never been pregnant, and when I was young, I thought it was because I was really good at taking the pill, which I definitely was. But I have no idea. There's a small percentage of women who basically have unexplained infertility, and that is me, I'm in that category,' Banks said. 'I had always had plenty of eggs; I never had trouble making embryos; they did not implant. For whatever reason, my uterus is hostile, I don't know what's going on, but they just will not stay in there. So I had a broken belly, is what I told my kids, mommy had a broken belly.'
She described the process of mourning her fertility and feeling responsible, even though she knew objectively it was not anything wrong she was doing. Banks also said that, at the time, surrogacy was a much more unusual choice, and she wasn't certain it was the right one.
'I had a great friend who was like, 'At the end of the day, there's gonna be a baby and you're gonna be a parent and nobody's gonna care how it happened,'' Banks shared. 'The other great advice I got was like, 'Is your goal to be pregnant or to be a mom?' And I was like, 'Oh, shit. It's just to be a mom. Right. I don't need to be pregnant, fuck, I just want the baby.' So it was like what's the best way to get to the baby? What are you doing? Who cares about the pregnancy? Get the baby.'