Tom Hanks opens up about new movie Sully, release date nerves and how he mastered his art
He’s one of Hollywood’s best-loved leading men, with a raft of awards to his name - but the actor is as down to earth as they come
THE idea of Tom Hanks getting nervous before the release of a film seems somehow ridiculous.
During his 36-year career, he’s racked up two Best Actor Oscars, four Golden Globe wins, a BAFTA, seven Emmys and a pair of Screen Actor’s Guild awards – not to mention countless more nominations.
His films have grossed more than £7billion worldwide and he’s widely recognised as one of the finest – and most revered –
actors of his generation.
And yet, ask if he ever gets nervous and he answers immediately.
“Every time I make a movie, it’s a risk, and I fully appreciate and fear that,” he says. “It’s this enjoyable, nauseous balance. Every time you make a movie, you have to convince everyone that it’s a great idea.
“I did a movie called Larry Crowne that I acted in, directed, produced and I thought it was a great idea… but nobody else did,” he laughs. “It was a risk and sometimes risks don’t always succeed.”
His latest project seems safer.
Hanks plays real-life Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger who, in 2009, successfully landed a commercial aeroplane on the Hudson river in New York – saving 155 passengers and crew from almost certain death.
The plane had suffered catastrophic engine failure after striking a flock of Canada geese following take-off, but Captain Sully’s cool head and extraordinary piloting skills meant a national tragedy was averted.
It subsequently became known as “The Miracle on The Hudson” and Sully and his crew were hailed as heroes, with the Captain even being ranked second in Time magazine’s Top 100 Most Influential Heroes And Icons of 2009 – only being pipped to the top spot by Michelle Obama.
It’s Sullenberger’s own bestselling book Highest Duty: My Search For What Really Matters that’s the basis for Hanks’ film.
And the actor believes there’s a simple, unshakeable reason why Sullenberger’s story resonates so strongly: it’s not so much a disaster movie, as a non-disaster movie.
“We had gone through 9/11,” he explains. “The last thing the world wanted to see and the last thing New York City wanted to experience were a bunch of dead people against the skyline. They did not want to see more wreckage, more flames on the morning news. They did not have to experience a moment where everything fell apart one more time.
“Can you imagine what the next 10 days would have been like in New York? All the bodies they would have to have pulled out of the river. It would have been a massive, long moment of national mourning.”
Coming in an age of superhero movies, the triumph of Captain Sullenberger was as basic, and as human, as it gets: he was simply a good man, doing his job well.
“The professionals actually did their job,” he says. “And guess what? We all survived what seems to be an act of god by way of a flock of Canada geese. And it turned out to be one of the best news stories of the day. So I think that’s why it resonates.”
Working with fellow actor-turned-director Clint Eastwood was another draw.
“It’s amazing,” says Hanks. “There’s no yelling, no hectic, no stress. Everybody has been with Clint for years, they’re like family. And you’re welcomed in the midst as family, which makes the working environment extremely peaceful and productive.”
Hanks had several meetings with the real Captain Sullenberger to prepare for the role, and both he and Eastwood encouraged the retired pilot to add his own input to the script.
Hanks has always taken any part he’s playing seriously, but the added responsibility of portraying someone who is not only a real-life hero but also a living hero, meant Hanks really didn’t want to get any details wrong.
“You don’t want to screw up somebody’s life, for one,” he explains. “And I do not ever want to project some sort of editorial aspect to their behaviour. They behaved as they behaved. What happened to them happened. I want to be authentic to all those things.”
The real-life Sullenberger was just as committed to authenticity.
“He walked me through the script,” says Hanks. “He had a lot more he wanted to talk about. He had a big, dog-eared, annotated version of one of the early drafts and he was going through it, even scenes I’m not in. He goes: ‘I know you’re not in this, Tom, but I want you to know.’
“Sully is a professional aviator. He walked around the script just like he walked around the plane before he took off. He wasn’t thrilled to have this movie made about him, but he wanted us to get it right. Whether we did that or not is open to interpretation. You’d have to ask him.”
Sully comes hot on the heels of another Hanks blockbuster, Inferno, the third film in which he plays Dan Brown’s Da Vinci code-cracking professor.
Earlier this year, he took the lead role in A Hologram For The King (based on the 2012 novel by Dave Eggers) and in 2015 he found the time to star in two movies, Ithaca and Bridge of Spies.
In fact, since his breakthrough role in 1984’s Splash, Hanks has acted in over 50 films – as well as TV miniseries Band of Brothers, where he also shared executive producer credits with Steven Spielberg.
To say he has a strong work ethic would be putting it mildly.
“Show business,” he laughs. “Show business gets in the way of everything, even pregnancies.
“I can go through [my career] and tell you in one movie, here I only have three kids and in this next scene I have four kids, because a child was born between the two.”
Hanks has been married to actress Rita Wilson since 1988, and they have two children together, Chester, 26 and Truman, 20.
He also has another son, Colin, 38, and a daughter, Elizabeth, 34, from his first marriage to actress Samantha Lewes.
He confesses that prior to signing on for Sully, he was preparing to take a well-deserved break from acting.
“I had worked, I had put my head down and ploughed through an awful lot of great stuff,” he says. “I’m not complaining. But I knew that I was tired and I had in my head a period of non-activity.
“But, as is often the case, something comes along and none of it is about business reasons. That’s not what you work for. The fact is I had the screenplay and I read it in 17 minutes and I was infected with the bug of imagining the story. And once that happens, you’re doomed.”
Presumably, the legacy of all those films – and the awards and accolades that have come with them – is that Hanks
can pick up the phone, speed-dial Clint Eastwood, Steven Spielberg, Ron Howard, or just about any other Hollywood big cheese, and sign up to whatever projects they may have going.
It sounds like a simplistic take on the way the movie industry works, but it’s not entirely untrue, either.
“Yes, there are a number of people I could call and say: ‘Let’s make a movie tomorrow,’ and that would be it,” he admits. “And I’m very fortunate to be in that position.
“But in order to create work as an artist, I look for something with danger, risk. That can take time to find. And when you do find it, you ask yourself: ‘Will anyone go see it if we make it?’ It’s like with this film, [screenplay writer] Todd said to me: ‘Will anyone understand this and what we’re trying to do here?’
“I said the same to Bob Zemeckis while we were shooting Forrest Gump. I said: ‘Bob, will anyone see this?’ And he says, ‘It’s a minefield Tom, it’s a minefield.’ You gotta have faith in your instincts. That’s all you can rely on.”
Hanks turned 60 this year, and with that milestone comes an inevitable reappraisal of his four decades as a working actor and where he is right now.
And although he laughs off the suggestion (“It’s just a number. That’s all it is. I literally forget what age I am. I still feel the same as I did at 40, at 35…”), press him on the subject and Hanks does admit to making a conscious decision as a younger
man to shape his career in a certain way.
Following a period in the ’80s and early ’90s in which he carved out a reputation as a lovable, slightly goofy leading man in comedies and romcoms such as Splash, Big, Joe Versus The Volcano and Sleepless In Seattle, in 1993 he astonished the critics with his performance as a lawyer suffering from AIDS in Philadelphia.
Hanks won his first Oscar for that role – adding a second the following year for Forrest Gump.
Since then, the roles he has taken have been notable for their diversity – whether it’s a stuffed cowboy in Toy Story, a mob enforcer in Road To Perdition, or a WW2 army captain on a suicidal mission in Saving Private Ryan.
“There was a time in my career where I felt I had made the same consecutive movie, five times,” he admits. “Like: ‘We want you to make this film, this time you’re working with so-and-so and it’s in Miami. And you’ll make this amount of money for it.’ I was just rolling them out and there came a point in my mid-30s where I said: ‘I’m not going to do that.’”
He laughs.
“But in the beginning, I wasn’t a very good actor. I’ve been an actor since I was 20 years old – and it took me a long time to learn through observance and experience. But there was never anything else because I wasn’t good at anything else.
“I could never imagine a different life. If I changed things in my life, then I wouldn’t have learned from the mistakes I made. You only really learn about yourself by getting your ass kicked.”
Playing a character such as Captain Chesley Sullenberger seems somehow perfect for Hanks: as with so many of his roles (no matter how different they seem at first glance), he’s the regular guy made good, the ordinary man pushed to do the extraordinary thing.
And, like Captain Sully, Hanks is typically modest about just how well-loved he is.
“You learn very quickly there is a public version of yourself that people want to see, and there is a private version that you must protect,” he says.
“Everybody has something they bring to the set. At the end of the day, you have to tell a brand-new story. I’ve never been bored doing any of these jobs. It makes you lose a little sleep at night, because you don’t want to be bad. But being an actor and acting in a movie is different than being a celebrity. You learn by making mistakes and you move on.”
He pauses, thinks for a moment.
“I just hope they don’t ever call me ‘Mr Hanks’ on set. I want to always be part of the team. That’s what I want. And that
is great.”