by Paul Fischer
by
Paul Fischer
Tom Hanks was in
his usual jovial mood when we met at a Chicago hotel, an appropriate 
venue
to discuss the Chicago-shot The Road to Perdition. The Tom Hanks
that one meets is in stark contrast to his Michael O'Sullivan, the lowbrow
hit man and surrogate son to gangster patriarch John Rooney (Paul
Newman). Much has been made of Hanks' change of image for this
role. Hanks disagrees that too much has been made of this aspect of the
movie, "because it takes into account a falsehood that it's possible
to change the image to begin with, which you can't. You walk into any
movie theatre with a preconceived idea of everybody who's in the movie
you're about to see, whether it's Liam Neeson or the
Affleck Brothers, and everybody knows that, then hopefully at some point
during the movie that switch goes off and you watch the movie and are
involved in what's going on. Hopefully you've been able to make some organic
connection with the audience that's been there on that particular day,
they're moved at that's that." The 45-year old actor, when asked
if he had a need to go down the road traveled by Michael Sullivan, quickly
responds that he "didn't need to play anything; there's
no medicinal quality to doing these movies," he laughingly jibes.
"You see what the potential for the movie is, and by that I mean,
it's ability to truly examine the theme which you think is expressed in
the movie. Then you see who eels who is going to be doing it." In
making his choices, Hanks adds "there's no science to it as well
as no weighing of pros and cons. It's an instantaneous reaction: I've
never seen this before. On the one hand it's a genre movie but actually
it's dealing with all this father-son stuff that's been around since the
Egyptians started carving clay tablets and telling stories in them. Therefore
it's something that I get and would like to explore, so you simply say
‘Yeah'."
These days, Hanks has that luxury to make such instantaneous
decisions, and that's been the way for the two-time Oscar winner for over
two decades. But at the beginning, he recalls making choices on the basis
"of being lucky to be offered a job, any job. The job could
have been selling yogurt; I would have taken any job at that
point, because you just want to be able to do it." How times have
changed, the actor muses. "I would like to think that I'm at this
point where the only things that I have to do are truly fascinating to
me. The burden of doing 
one
of these movies is really substantial", Hanks, explains. "Not
the least of which is when you have to talk about it as much as you have
to and the desire to talk it up in a genuine way. If I was to tell you
that the sole reason I did The Road to Perdition was for a change
of image, how would you be able to brook that?"
Hanks loves his profession, as choosy as he is, he remains enamored of it. Despite being consistently labeled the nicest guy in Hollywood, Hanks recalls never loving anything else. "Acting was the greatest job in high school. I never went into this for any other reason in that it's ridiculous amounts of fun. How can this be work pretending to be other people, whether on stage or in the movies? I can't believe they paid me $285 a week in order to do this thing. And I collected a $10 a raise ever since," he adds laughingly. "Some people do this for power, others for fame and some do it do that they can talk to a guy at you at press junkets. I'm not in it for any of those reasons. I shouldn't be called the nicest guy, but rather the luckiest guy."
It was also the luckiest guy who, at a very youthful 45,
received a recent American Film Institute Lifetime 
Achievement
Award. One of the youngest ever recipients, Hanks admits that the whole
affair was somewhat surreal, to say the least. "I got the phone call,
went through about five months of self-loathing because of it, made my
peace with it till I just hoped it was a good party, show good clips,
worried who was sitting where and sat down."
And Hanks' career is not slowing down. Next he re-teams with Steven Spielberg in Catch Me If You Can, opposite Leonardo DiCaprio. "That was a nice experience. I like working with people a second time around because you're passed the getting-to-know-you phase and you just know how they work. Steven works very fast. He's got the same crew as he had when we made Saving Private Ryan, and there's the added bonus of working with Leo who added something else to the mix."
While The Road to Perdition revisits the classic world of the American gangster, at the film's core is an often profound examination of fathers and sons, told in a complex way. For Hanks, that was clearly what attracted him to the project. He was able to respond to the material, "by looking back at the relationship that I had with my own father, as well as the relationship that I have with my own kids. When I read it, I said to myself: I know what these guys are going through." Hanks' relationship with his own father, who was a cook, may not have mirrored this film precisely, but the actor does concede that "it was strained. I didn't live with him for a long time, though basically he was a good guy. He was as complex as anybody's is going to be. We were two different personality types. My dad was a shy man. We didn't have a lot in common but we still had a good relationship." Hanks believes that their relationship "would have been better now, now that I'm 45." Hanks took much from his father, he says, and brought that to his relationship with his own sons. "Of course everybody does. There's a lot of stuff that went down not just between me but also the rest of my dad's kids, and so I don't want my kids to go through that. There are also some mistakes that I know I'm making, no matter how hard I try." As for the most important lesson he hopes to instill in his children, the actor pauses slightly. "To like what you and wake up and be content in the morning."
