Tom Hanks, the comedic actor with the crooked grin who played the man-child in "Big," the mermaid-lover in "Splash" and the shy widower in "Sleepless in Seattle," dances cheek-to-cheek with a male lover in his latest film.
Radical image change?Hanks, the childish charmer who seemed so in character as a boy-in-a-man's-body in "Big" (1988) - a role for which he won his first Oscar nomination - takes a giant leap as a dramatic actor in "Philadelphia," the fictional tale of a gay lawyer who sues his former employers for firing him because he has AIDS.
"Philadelphia," the $25 million Tri-Star production that represents Hollywood's first real attempt to address the AIDS crisis, made its limited debut in Los Angeles, New York and Toronto Dec. 22 and hits screens nationwide Jan. 14.
Moviegoers accustomed to seeing Hanks gazing wistfully at Meg Ryan in "Sleepless" or cuddling with Darryl Hannah in "Splash" may be in for a sharp surprise as his character, Andrew Beckett, shares a kiss or slow dances with longtime lover Miguel, played by Antonio Banderas.
"That's probably going to make people in Dubuque go `Oh, no, they're dancing together, oh my God!' " Hanks says with a chuckle.
"Philadelphia," directed by Jonathan ("Silence of the Lambs") Demme and written by Ron Nyswaner, is a thoughtful exploration of the prejudices surrounding the AIDS epidemic wrapped around one man's battle against wrongful dismissal because of his disease.
"It's really about how we treat each other," the 37-year-old Hanks said in a recent interview with Reuters. "You end up taking that home. My horizons were expanded by having been involved in this movie."
"It didn't make me examine anything about my own sexual proclivities or sexuality," said Hanks, who in 1988 married for the second time, to actress Rita Wilson. "It made me think about whatever judgments I placed on other people."
Hanks was not the unfettered choice for the lead. Producer Ed Saxon says Daniel Day-Lewis was first to come to mind during casting.
Yet in this case, said Saxon, second turned out to be best. "You can't imagine anyone else in the part."
Hanks said at one time in his career, the role of Joe Miller (Denzel Washington), an ambulance-chasing attorney who gets the film's funny lines, would have been a natural for him. But when he read the script, he wanted to be Andrew Beckett.
"I am a selfish actor, and to be able to work with Jonathan and Denzel in this movie that obviously is going to be perceived as some sort of an event . . . I wanted to have the best part in it," he said.
For Hanks, it was a chance to confront some of his own preconceptions about AIDS and its victims as well as to take on a new challenge as an actor.
He admits to a "strange, mercenary kind of feeling" through his research for the role, which included long discussions with gay men suffering with AIDS.
"This wasn't just learning how to ride a horse because I'm gonna play a cowboy. This was something substantially different," he said. "It's a very, very curious position to find oneself in. It was almost a peace that I had to make individually with the whole process."
Hanks goes through a remarkable metamorphosis during the movie, from a robust legal eagle to a gaunt, gray-haired AIDS sufferer with lesions on his face and body who collapses during one climactic moment. He lost 35 pounds for the transformation.
Hanks says although he's not sure he suffered from "survivor's guilt" - the frequent feeling of gay men who have lost loved ones to AIDS and yet are not themselves afflicted - he admits to struggling with the fantasy/reality of the moviemaking: He was able to wash off the makeup.
"I'd come out of the shower in the morning and I'd have this shaved head and I'd see my pelvic bone sticking out," he recalls. "And I thought, `I'm knocking myself out trying to get this way and there's guys, men and women, who can't stop this from happening to them right now.
"It's a surreal situation to be in."
Did Hanks fear the image of gay AIDS sufferer would stick - and perhaps cost him future roles?
"I don't think there's any stigma one way or the other. It's not a big deal," he said.