Over the years, many actresses have shared stories — sometimes horrific ones — illustrating misogyny and the gender imbalance in Hollywood that still persists to this day. Pitch Perfect 2 director and Power Rangers star Elizabeth Banks, too, has one for the history books. According to a recent interview with the actress, she auditioned for the role of Mary-Jane Watson in Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man, released in 2002, but she was passed over because she was deemed “too old.”
She told the U.K.’s edition of Glamour magazine (via The Guardian):
I screen-tested for the role of Mary-Jane Watson in the first Spider-Man movie, opposite Tobey Maguire...Tobey and I are basically the same age and I was told I was too old to play her. I’m like, ‘Oh, OK, that’s what I’ve signed up for’.
Banks was 28 at the time, just 16 months older than Maguire, who went on to portray the Marvel web-slinger in two more movies. The role of Mary-Jane eventually went to Kirsten Dunst, who was 18 at the time cameras began rolling on Spider-Man in 2001. Banks was instead given the role of Betty Brant, J. Jonah Jameson’s secretary at The Daily Bugle newspaper.
Despite the casting snub, Banks says she’s grateful for her career’s “longevity.” She remarked, “I was never a flavor of the month. I feel very comfortable that I will be working in this industry for a while.”
The actress moved on to a string of comedic roles, and recent years she hit a boom, thanks in large part to her roles in the Pitch Perfect and Hunger Games franchises (even reprising her role in the cult film Wet Hot American Summer's Netflix spinoff, First Day of Camp). She added director to her resume with the sequel of the a cappella film, and now she’s reportedly adding a role in the Ocean’s Eleven female-led reboot, Ocean’s Ocho.
