Elizabeth Banks: I could perform an abortion after my latest role

Elizabeth Banks could "perform an abortion" after starring in 'Call Jane.'

The 49-year-old actress stars as a suburban housewife in the 1960s who finds herself pregnant but reaches out to a group of underground abortionists known as the Janes and joked that she "might" be able to perform a termination procedure herself after learning about the process on set.

She said: "I think I might be able to, actually. I'd like to have a little more practice because I didn't actually ever get to dilate anybody—I got to learn about the tools, watch the videos. But the procedure that we performed from 1968, there are similarities to it now but it is not the exact same. And most abortions now are self-managed via two pills.

The 'Hunger Games' star - who has been married to Max Handelman since 2003 and has sons Felix, 11, and nine-year-old Magnus with him - went on to add that she used " a lot of sense memory" while shooting the role and recalled a time where she had a "painful" procedure for her ovarian cysts carried out by a male technician which left her "bawling her eyes out."

She told Vanity Fair: "There was a lot of sense memory in the acting for me. It's very intimate, what women are put through. I had a procedure once [for] ovarian cysts. It was a specialized procedure that had to be done by somebody I've never met before, a male technician. He starts his procedure, no bedside manner, and it was so painful. I said, 'Can you please stop?'

"It was actually making me nauseous, and I was worried I was gonna throw up. He treated me like, 'Can’t you just get it together?'

" So I forced myself through this pain, through this procedure with this asshole technician in this room with no understanding of what [I’m feeling]. And then I went to my car and I bawled my f****** eyes out. And honestly, that's what I was thinking of while I was having the procedure in the movie. A pretty easy sense memory to bring up because it was raw and fresh, even though it was 10 or 11 years ago now."

'Call Jane' is set to be released in cinemas in the UK on 4 November.