RIP Lisa Banes: Revisit the acclaimed actresses’ iconic performances

Lisa Banes, the acclaimed actress who starred in movies like Gone Girl, has recently passed away at age sixty-five after a hit & run incident in New York City. After getting hit by a scooter on the Upper West Side’s Amsterdam Avenue, Lisa was taken to a hospital with a traumatic brain injury. She wasn’t able to recover and died on June 14th.

Born in Ohio and brought up in Colorado, Lisa Banes started her artistic career while attending New York’s Juilliard School, appearing on many Broadway shows afterwards. Some of her performances include Rumors, High Society, Accent on Youth, and Isn’t it Romantic, where she landed a nomination for the Drama Desk Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play in 1984.

She also had several roles in TV & movies, and her roles in those screens are what we’ll remember here today. If you’re a fan of Lisa Banes’s work, here are some of her iconic performances.

Cocktail (1988)

In this 1988 movie, Lisa plays Bonnie, a wealthy woman who gets wooed by Tom Cruise’s character Brian Flanagan, who owns a bar in New York and took a job as a bartender at a Jamaican resort in efforts to raise money for his own place.

During that time in Jamaica, Brian’s partner Doug (Bryan Brown) places a bet on him, saying he couldn’t win over Bonnie. Brian wins Bonnie over and sleeps with Bonnie, making his romantic partner Jordan Mooney (Elisabeth Shue) devastated. Both have fun, but he then regrets sleeping with Bonnie.

It may have been a small role in the movie, but Lisa Banes surely left her mark as this quirky & sassy character.

Gone Girl (2014)

Here’s maybe Lisa Banes’s greatest performance as a movie actress ever. The movie is an adaptation of the Gillian Flynn novel of the same name, inspired by real events, in which the wife disappears, and the husband becomes the prime suspect of the event.

Lisa Banes plays Marybeth Elliot, the mother of Amy Elliot Dunne (Rosamund Pike), who disappears after her fifth wedding anniversary. She endures Amy’s disappearance and sees marriage to Nick Dunne (Ben Affleck) fall apart during the course of the action. And she also stood through all the troubles Amy was involved in, from being cheated on by Nick, to false claims of abuse, even a plan she build to have Nick murder her.

Marybeth also endured her daughter killing Desi Collings (Neil Patrick Harris), one of her ex-boyfriends. All that is surpassed by what happens at the end of the movie, where Amy announces that she is pregnant and stays with Nick. Certainly a lot for a mother’s heart.

The King of Queens (1998-2007) and Six Feet Under (2001-2005)

Here are some of Lisa Banes’s famous TV roles. Although the vast majority of us remember these shows as the story of the delivery driver Doug Hefferman (Kevin James) and his wife Carrie (Leah Remini), who works as a secretary in Manhattan, Lisa had a recurring character in the comedy series.

She played Georgia Boone, Carrie’s boss at the law firm she works as a legal secretary. The normal office manager you would expect.

Lisa Banes also appeared on the HBO show Six Feet Under. On the Time Flies episode of the series, aired in 2005, Lisa played a small character called Victoria, participating in the funeral home actions.

One Life to Live (2004)

Lisa Banes can also be seen in one of the most famous soap operas that ABC has ever made, One Life to Live. On that show, she played the character Eve McBain, from January to March 2004. She goes to visit her son and goes out on dates, but Eve gets abducted and is forced to tell that Natalie Buchanan’s husband was alive.

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Although many of the roles could be small, Lisa Banes performed those with skills and talent. You can check those out by watching the movies & shows we listed here.

What do you think of Lisa Banes’s work? Let us know in the comments.