Interview: Tom Hanks

Tom Hanks: he’s played everyone from a hapless widower to an astronaut to a drunken baseball coach to an AIDS victim, and in the course of his mammoth 33-year career has established himself as one of the recognisable names (and faces) on the planet.

Frankly, it’s hard to imagine a Hollywood without him.

This week he’s in London promoting his latest project, the tense thriller Captain Phillips, which opened BFI London Film Festival on Wednesday night amongst a sea of glowing reviews, and the suggestion that it sees Hanks give his best performance since 2002’s Castaway.

London Film Festival itself, Hanks said on Wednesday, pre-screening, “may put other film festivals out of business. Toronto will become an asterix. They’re really throwing down the gauntlet here.”

Research tells me that, maybe predictably, Hanks is the highest paid Hollywood actor of all time — so this is praise indeed for the festival, which is now in its 57thyear. It’s the same age, incidentally, as the man himself. His opening a festival that is growing in importance year on year seems wholly appropriate.

Captain Phillips tells the story of the hijacking of the Maersk Alabama, which took place 240 miles off the coast of Somalia in April 2009. Early reviews suggest that it will almost certainly do spectacularly well when it hits the nation’s cinema screens on 18th October. But what does Hanks himself have to say about it? What of the emotional depth that is required to play a captain whose ship has been seized by pirates — especially alongside the responsibility that comes with portraying real life events?

It’s all a balancing act, Hanks says — in doing justice to the filmmaker, but also to the true events that transpired.

“I think the responsibility goes hand in hand with any time you’re just going to stand up and hey, I’ve got a story to tell,” he says. “There is a bit of advantage and a bit of pressure that comes along with something that is non-fiction-ish. You do have advantages — that you have very little that you need to make up. You have things that you need to condense; you have things that you must translate to the film. You have to take reality and turn it into some sort of dramatic effect.”

Of meeting the real Captain Richard Phillips, he says: “It’s not the most realistic of situations to walk into someone’s house and say “Yeah, I’m that Forrest guy, that’s me, I will be playing you in a film whether you like it or not. It’s an interesting dilemma that you have. But Rich had already been through the celebrity exposure right after this happened, he did a lot of interviews, spoken to the media a lot, so he understood the oddity of it all.”

He adds: “The first meetings I had with Rich I said, “Look, I’m going to say things you never said, I’m going to do things you did not do. But based on that let’s get as close to the DNA, the authenticity, as possible.”

We’re interested to know how he managed to get the emotional depth required to tell Phillips’s story — but it’s clear that Hanks isn’t about to give away the key to his success just yet. He laughs: “That’s a secret. It’s like going to a press conference with Coco-Cola and asking what they’re recipe is. They’ll hand it over without a doubt.”

He adds: “I think to consider myself some kind of creative artist and a professional. My job is to be able to get there when the moment comes, on the day.”

Shooting on a real lifeboat, he says, was a “Pretty realistic hell on earth” and at times like “an amusement park ride.” Reflecting the mindset of Phillips himself was obviously a primary concern — the unexpected moments within the unbearably hot lifeboat with his pirate captors, joking about the Somali and US navies, whilst being very much aware of their withdrawal from khat, the amphetamine-like leaves that they chewed as a matter of course and which they were running out of. “Without that he was worried that there was going to be some other sort of breakdown which wasn’t going to be healthy for him,” Hanks says.

Hanks recently revealed that he has been fighting Type 2 Diabetes, and that he’s known about it for 21 years — during which time has had to lose band gain weight for roles. It’s unlikely to have been the best thing for his health. Would he warn other actors about this? Russell Crowe, maybe?

He’s very careful, though, about comparing his situation to that of others’. “You’re trying to tie me into a quote on Russell Crowe, aren’t you?” he says. “Anybody else? Miley Cyrus? Benedict Cumberbatch?”

Well, ok. Not that we ever thought we’d spend time discussing Miley Cyrus with Tom Hanks, but since he brought it up… what’s his opinion on recent goings on?

“Miley Cyrus?” he asks. “I think she’ll be fine.”

He won’t be pulled into commenting on his fellow Hollywood leading men, though. His Diabetes is clearly something that he is comfortable living with, and it doesn’t appear that he feels it needs much discussion.

“I didn’t blaze any territory by saying that something is going to kill me; I think we can all say that something will take us down at some point. I don’t think it’s going to be Type 2 Diabetes. I think it will be something else.

“The gaining and losing of weight might be something to do with it; you’re eating bad food and not getting any exercise when you’re heavy. I think I was genetically inclined to get it, and I think it goes back to a lifestyle that I’ve been leading.”

“I’m pretty good on cholesterol; I’m pretty good on a lot of other stuff that goes on, it just happens that my body type and my lifestyle give me preclusion to high blood sugars. I know what to do, I have access to good doctors, good food, and after that it’s up to the individual.

“But I refuse, refuse, refuse to tell any of those other celebrities what to do.”

Diabetes isn’t going to affect his career choices either, because “it’s just life.” Although he won’t be losing or gaining weight dramatically for roles again, something he describes as being “a young man’s game.” But then, he wouldn’t go on holiday and gain 30 pounds either.

His closing words on the subject? “It’s part of life and I’m just fine, thank you.”

Captain Phillips is released in cinemas on 18th October.

The BFI London Film Festival runs until 20th October.

Originally published at https://www.thenationalstudent.com.