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Ordinarily she falls into the category of casting-director catnip, but one role Elizabeth Banks is hardly a natural for is golf pro. In the last 10 minutes at an L.A. driving range, the 32-year-old actress has whiffed, talked during my backswing, and dropped a few F-bombs. And she's actually the better player of our twosome. "No, really, with you, it's like watching a master," Banks says sarcastically. Her mouth forms an alluring all-American simper and she pushes her Ray-Bans up on her forehead, her tousled blond hair pulled back. "Golf—who has the time?"

Underemployment is no worry for Banks, one of the most stealthily productive actresses in a town of loud ambition. Her barn-burning beauty has lit up everything from Seabiscuit to The 40-Year-Old Virgin to NBC's Scrubs. This year, she shows up in no fewer than four films, including the bound-to-blockbust Spider-Man 3. "Hard to believe, but we didn't have a script for our scenes," she says of Sam Raimi's $250 million baby, in which she bills and coos as the editor's secretary at the Daily Bugle. "J.K. Simmons and I are the comic relief. We'll just do bits. It's like bit city."

Banks gets improv practice with her husband, writer Max Handelman, whom she met at the University of Pennsylvania. "I was coming over here today and he was like, 'Are you gonna wear your hair like that?' " Their marital routine is charmingly civilian: Friday night bowling or karaoke ("I'm big on Bon Jovi, a little bit of Poison, or any sort of power ballad"), ski weekends at Mammoth, and rollicking dinner parties in the Hollywood Hills.

Keeping it real comes easy to the Pittsfield, Massachusetts, native, who grew up the oldest of four in what she calls a "house divided"—that is, between the Red Sox (Mom) and the Yankees (Dad). And so she's still adjusting to the surreal life. Take photo shoots, for instance. "It's the bizarrest part of this job," Banks confides. "I just get buck naked in front of all these people that I've never met before. I pray they don't go tell all their friends every little detail of my body. I pray I plucked all the right hairs and I don't have anything hanging out."—HUDSON MORGAN

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