Who knew Tom Hanks was such a serious guy?
"I constantly ponder my place in the zeitgeist," he says, "despite the fact that I'm relatively successful, for now. I'm continually pondering what's coming along next and what does any of this mean? Does all this stuff that I've done before matter at all?"
Hanks is saying this the morning after the premiere of "Cast Away," his new film that has earned more than $100 million in its first two weeks. Hanks plays a FedEx troubleshooter who survives a plane crash, washes up on a desert island and winds up staying there — absolutely alone — for four years before returning to a civilization where everything important to him has changed.
While hardly a grim film, it does explore such weighty themes as the nature of human existence, the consequences of making choices and the inexorable juggernaut of time.
This wasn't a mere assignment for Hanks. He came up with the idea for the film six years ago, and — along with William Broyles Jr., who also wrote "Apollo 13," and Robert Zemeckis, who directed "Forrest Gump" — actively shaped and refined it at every step.
Hanks, who is 43, says the film has autobiographical dimensions, but then laughs, seeing the absurdity of the claim. He is, after all, one of the most gifted and blessed actors around. He's won two Oscars, makes whatever movie he wants whenever he wants, earns top dollar and enjoys one of Hollywood's golden marriages (to actress Rita Wilson). How could his life possibly be likened to Robinson Crusoe's?
"I'm a lucky man; there's no doubt about that," he allows. "I can't say I've fought off desperation in my life. But the thing that my character in this film is going through — there's this concept of being at the crossroads of one's life and feeling as though that is exactly where you're supposed to be. In American society, that usually is a place in our lives that's fraught with anxiety. But by and large, this is what life is made up of every day. You're at some brand of crossroads, and you can feel comfortable and secure in that position — or you can feel on the edge. I'm forever fascinated by that human dilemma."
The crossroads Hanks found himself facing a few years back, when his career took off and he realized he could do whatever he wanted, involved just that — figuring out what was truly worthwhile.
"I am part of creating this great cinematic art, and it has to be about bigger things," he says. "At the same time, of course, you want to be entertained. But if you're actually going to go through all the work to do a huge film that costs a lot of money, I can't get excited about it unless it's about something bigger than just the movies."
So, Hanks spends his time on projects that stir his passions — whether they touch on the space program ("Apollo 13"), AIDS ("Philadelphia"), World War II ("Saving Private Ryan") or the overriding issue of figuring out what stirs passion to begin with ("Cast Away").
This attraction to "big themes" is hardly a recent development. He started out in classical-repertory theater, which is about nothing but big themes.
"Even when I was in high school and college," he recalls, "just going to the theater in San Francisco and Berkeley — alone, because no one would go with me — I was seeing the big plays: 'The Iceman Cometh,' 'The Master Builder,' 'Peer Gynt.' I'd see comedies, but they were comedies like 'The Merry Wives of Windsor' or 'The Importance of Being Earnest.' My concept of entertainment was never 'Good News' or 'Sugar Babies.' I always thought that stuff was fine, but there was no real emotional investment required, so I wasn't that interested in it.
"But," he adds, lightening up, "we're also talking about the man who made 'Bachelor Party' and 'Turner & Hooch.' "
The striking thing about Hanks is that, even while talking about art, philosophy and existential angst, his brow never furrows; he never seems haughty or pretentious or anything other than what those who know him say he genuinely is — an unassuming, nice guy.
This nice-guy image influences the kinds of scripts he's sent and the audience's perception of the kinds of roles he takes, which frustrates him a bit.
"In 'The Green Mile,' I played an executioner," he says, "a guy who kills people for a living and who does it without remorse, very professionally, lickety-split. And everybody said, 'Yeah, but you were such a nice executioner.' "
In the next film he's working on, "The Road to Perdition," directed by Sam Mendes (who made "American Beauty"), Hanks plays a hit man. "And when the time comes," he predicts, "they'll probably say, 'Yeah, you killed people, but you were such a nice guy about the way you did it.' So there's no winning this argument."
To the degree this is a problem, it is mainly one of Hanks' creation — and when it comes down to it, he's not really complaining. He has said he avoids playing villains, because he simply doesn't understand the motivation of doing evil. "I have no desire to play the mad bomber," he says. "I could, in an instant. But to what end? What's it going to examine?"
He denies that his avoidance of bad-guy roles has anything to do with a desire to maintain an image. However, he is well aware that — however vast the range of his roles — there is an underlying Tom Hanks persona, a Decent Everyman, who the public has come to expect when they plunk down their money to see him on the screen.
"All actors, as soon as they become known for their work, experience some degree of iconography," he says. "I don't say yes to a script until I read it and say, 'Oh, this is brand new stuff for me.' Yet at the same time, it always has to be recognizable for the audience. It always has to be. You talk about these actors who had amazing careers that lasted a long, long time. And the only reason they lasted a long, long time is because they had total believability."
Hanks' style of acting is so natural, it hardly looks like acting at all, though in "Cast Away" — for which he recently won the New York Film Critics Circle's Best Actor prize — the effort is more visible in at least one sense. For the second half of the film, which takes place after he's been on the island for four years, Hanks lost more than 40 pounds and grew a wild beard.
The whole crew took a year off between the first two parts, so he could go through the transformation. Hanks is nonchalant about how he took off the weight. "It's just time and discipline," he says. "I ate egg-white omelets and a lot of fiber and a lot of vegetables — actually, not a lot. It was mainly the exercise. You go on another treadmill, you go on the Stairmaster, you go on the bike, you go on another long hike. You just live a much more scheduled day."
The idea for the film came to him while he was watching a TV interview with a World War II veteran. "He'd gotten shot down or shipwrecked, and he was on an island," Hanks recalls. "The interviewer said, 'Oh, that must have been quite an experience.' And he said, 'No, it was a terrible experience. I clung to a rock for a week and a half, and I thought I was going to die there.' And I thought, 'Well, I've never heard that before.' Because 'Gilligan's Island' is so imprinted in everybody's mind, or 'Swiss Family Robinson' — I said, 'What? He didn't make a shower of coconut shells? He didn't make bamboo swings?'
"I also saw this show about looking for Amelia Earhart," he goes on. "There was this island somewhere in the Pacific that was so barren that once a team's supply ran out, they had nothing to do but leave. They found a boot and a piece of metal, and they thought maybe that was Amelia Earhart's boot. And I just began to ponder the idea of somebody who lost everything — not only lost fire and light and all that, but also lost the distractions of our lives. What would that do to the psyche?"
There is one scene, toward the end of the film, where Hanks comes as close as any actor has come to answering that question.
His character is out in the ocean, on a raft, accompanied only by a volleyball — which he had found long ago in a FedEx box that washed ashore and has since turned into a companion. The ball falls off the raft and floats away, and Hanks tries to swim after it, breaking down in a convulsion of grief.
"Here's an example of the things that will be demanded of you as an actor," Hanks says. "A lot of times you've got to kiss a girl who's not really your girlfriend, or something like that. Well, we're out in the middle of the ocean. There's a barge nearby with all this camera equipment on it. And now you have to say goodbye to your friend — who's a volleyball. And it has to be this emotional thing." He starts to laugh.
"Oh, geez, what a day!" he moans, still laughing. "Just a grotesque and horrible, horrible, horrible day! And, by the way, the sun is shining and there's water and you're in Fiji — oh, man, it was the most surreal day I've ever had as an actor."
Did he pretend that the ball was someone close to him in real life? "No, just the opposite," he says. "I knew exactly what that was. I didn't pretend anything. The only thing you had to pretend is that you weren't making a movie. You can't pretend it's your dog and you're 7 years old. That doesn't work." He laughs. "I wish it would. It's hard. It's hard. It screws you up. It does."