Elle Fanning felt pressure to find funny lines for Hunger Games prequel

Elle Fanning put pressure on herself to come up with a "funny phrase" like her predecessor Elizabeth Banks while making The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping.

In the upcoming film, set 24 years before the original franchise, Fanning plays a younger version of Banks' fan-favourite character Effie Trinket.

In an interview with Banks for People, The Great actress admitted she put pressure on herself to improvise and come up with funny lines after learning her predecessor did so while making the original films.

"(Director) Francis (Lawrence) told me that Effie, she's in the books, yes, but he allowed you to improvise and go for it. He's like, 'Most of all the funny lines and all the Effie-isms and everything that we say... That was just Elizabeth.' So I was like (panicked gasp)," she shared. "Every night I'd be like, 'Okay, I got to try to come up with a funny phrase.'"

Despite the scale of the production, Lawrence allowed Fanning to improvise freely while shooting her Effie scenes.

"He was like, 'Yeah, just come up with something. Just say it, whatever you feel, it's okay.' And he's like, 'That's what Elizabeth did.' So I'm like, 'Okay,'" she added.

While she didn't want to "imitate" the Pitch Perfect star, Fanning saw her performance as an "ode" to Banks' work, and she often turned to YouTube to help her find the Effie accent.

"Thank you to all the fans again for their YouTube compilations that they've made of you," she told Banks. "They (were) very helpful to me at 5am in the morning in the hair and make-up trailer when I'm trying to get your accent right."

Banks played Effie in all four original films, from 2012's The Hunger Games to 2015's The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2.

The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping will be released in cinemas on 20 November.