The Hunger Games very quickly became a full-blown cultural phenomenon, with the world caught up in the star-crossed romance of Katniss and Peeta. Even as their worlds were turned upside down, they kept the flames burning. In these movies, Woody Harrelson and Elizabeth Banks each play a kind of mentor figure to the young characters. However, unbeknownst to most people, the two older actors were having their own star-crossed bit of romance.
In a 2012 interview with Moviefone, Elizabeth Banks was described some of the finer points of acting, including separating out her own feelings for Woody Harrelson from her character's feelings for Harrelson's character Haymitch. Banks told her interviewer that, speaking for herself, she had a crush on Harrelson, one she implied was more intense than the milder crush that her character has on Haymitch. Interestingly enough, Harrelson revealed in 2016 that he completely improvised a moment when he kissed Banks. Harrelson was characteristically blunt about his motivation for doing so, saying, "I have a crush on Elizabeth Banks, I'm not going to lie," and went on to say "I think she's a beautiful woman, I think she's a marvelous actress, and I just love her as a person." How into it was Harrelson? He told Entertainment Tonight that even though The Hunger Games films had ended, he hoped for an eventual sequel that would showcase their characters' romance, as "it wasn't like just a light thing where we thought it was nothing."
