An Interview with Tom Hanks (continued)

Your character of Professor Dorr is certainly an eccentric creation. What did you draw on to create the role?
Oh I don't know, I see a little Mark Twain in there. Certainly some John Wilkes Booth, some [Edgar Allan] Poe, a touch of Colonel Sanders, Inspector Clouseau [from The Pink Panther films] and maybe just a little bit of Bennett Cerf. He's flamboyant. I mean, it's the first time since I did Shakespeare that I've played a character who wears a cape! (Laughs.)

Your character has a lot of dialogue that he has to deliver in a very quick, very stylised manner. Did that take a lot of work?
That was the only difficult aspect of playing him. It took me several days to memorise those long dialogue sequences, but otherwise it was a lot of fun. To get out those lines convincingly, it's sort of like jumping on a freight train going full throttle. The way he jumps from one subject to the next, it all sort of just spills out. You start saying that stuff as fast as you can and you can't hesitate, because Dorr doesn't hesitate. You have to make it spellbinding.

I also invented my own back story for him to get into his head better. He says he's on sabbatical from that college in Mississippi, but I think he's been on sabbatical for 17 years. You just know, he got fired for something, probably something a bit scandalous. I just figured that out and put it in the back story in my mind. He's just one of those characters you have to tackle head first. You dive right into him and never look back.

You've worked with some of the top directors in the business. What was different about the Coen brothers' way of working?
Everybody works differently, but here's what I think they do: the two of them have already spent a long time making the movie already - long before we ever show up on the set. They've already made the movie, we just have to step in and film the scenes. Sure, things change, but of all the films I've made, this one had the least script changes. In fact, the only changes were because they had to get [legal] clearance on simple things like the use of certain corporate names... stuff like that. Steven Spielberg, to give you an idea of how he works, will often play on a set. He'll get there and see a possibility and explore that possibility and try different things. He'll still get everything he planned to get that day, but he'll improvise as well.

So the Coen Brothers are a lot less wild in terms of how they work, as opposed to the material they choose to write?
That's a good way of putting it. I was grateful that they aren't free-form filmmakers - the type who are constantly tinkering with scripts, always going back rewriting, bolstering up somebody's part, cutting down another one, changing dialogue, that kind of thing. It was very freeing for me as an actor. Sometimes I had to come in with eight pages of very complicated dialogue memorised - having spent the last three-and-a half-weeks getting it down. It was nice that there were no changes, or else we'd probably still be filming! (Laughs.)

You're one of the rare actors who has been able to succeed at playing not only serious as well as comic roles, but also becoming an institution...
Oh, stop, I'm not ready to be bronzed... I'm lucky enough to be able to only make movies that I'm interested in seeing. So that always gives me an added instinctive thrust when it comes to assuming a role, because I have a deep interest in the character to begin with. I also think that I have an advantage in that audiences think that I'm a safe choice. The public probably sees me as a nice guy who can fit into a lot of different roles without saying he's too handsome for that or he's too serious or whatever. So I can morph into different characters without seeming out of place.

Have you ever felt uncomfortable with a role or had a bad experience making a movie?
This will sound so syrupy, but the fact is that I've never been miserable in any of my roles. On Apollo 13, I think I could have stayed on that set for a 100 million years. A League Of Their Own was a ridiculously pleasant movie to make. All I did was flirt with girls and play baseball all day. I don't think of acting in hallowed terms. It's too enjoyable for that. When you think about it, filmmaking is all just a big crapshoot. We're all just dodging bullets up there. You never know when your career is about to become terminal. One last big swipe, then everybody says, `That's it.' (Laughs.)

Obviously you've achieved an incredible amount of public and critical recognition in your career. But on a personal level, when did you feel that you could do just about anything as an actor?
It was probably Steven Spielberg who convinced me to be fearless. When Saving Private Ryan came around, I told Steven I never would have imagined my being able to be in a movie like that. I never thought that anyone would buy a guy like me being in that position because they're supposed to be muscle-bound heroes showing no fear and all that. But the whole point of the movie was, no, those guys were guys like you, and I said, `I get it. I completely understand that.'

So much has been written about your coming from an upbringing where you were moving every few months to a new home and to a new school. What's your perspective on how you managed to avoid being screwed up by that?
Well, assuming your last assumption is correct... (laughs) I think I was lucky in that I found a way to identify with all the good things I had going for me as a child... I think it comes down to a particular kind of yearning that you have. Mine was always being connected to something that was contrary to what the real family circumstance was. I had a great teacher for second, third, and fourth grade. Mrs Castle. She just made me feel like a god.

I had good friends when I was going through the tough years of junior high and high school. They weren't potheads. They were mostly just guys, and all we'd do is sit around and laugh. I went to churches and became part of theatre groups, stuff like that.

So there was something in you that prevented you from feeling adrift or alienated by your constant moving about?
Not when I was growing up, although later in life, in my early twenties, I went through a typical existential wandering period. But those are the kinds of experiences which shape you and make you who you are. It's all useful in some way and you can always grow from that. I was never intimidated by a new school or a new class or new house or new town. I was very tight with my older sister and older brother. Was it chaos? Absolutely. Were we flirting with malnutrition? Of course. Did we nearly kill ourselves three or four times? Absolutely. But at the same time we were laughing our heads off... Life is like that.