Elizabeth Banks, Zoe Saldana, Jessica Lange & More Stars Talk Firsts

Each year, ELLE Magazine honors a selection of extraordinary actresses in their Women in Hollywood portfolio. This year, Jessica Lange, Jennifer Garner, Tina Fey, Zoe Saldana, Brie Larson, Annette Bening, Elizabeth Banks, and Gugu Mbatha-Raw grace individual covers of the magazine. As a group, they were feted in Los Angeles this week, where the above video was screened to an intimate room at the Four Seasons Hotel.

The actresses discuss firsts—their first sex scene, first audition, first real paycheck. Lange says Gone With the Wind is the first film that made her want to fall in love: “I wrote love letters to myself from Rhett Butler.”

Larson recalls her first audition. She was six and repeatedly told the casting agent how much she loved to act. “The biggest lesson you’ll learn in life is you gotta lighten up,” she says. And of her first sex scene (filmed in a tent), Banks says she immediately realized, “I’m going to have to leave a bit of my dignity on the floor every day to do this job.” Watch the rest of them weigh in, above.