Tom Hanks: I learned a lot from my father and I hope my children learn something from me
Tom Hanks started his life in a poor family in California, America. His father was a cook in a restaurant and his mother worked in a hospital. He loved playing football and running. When I recently met him, he was wearing glasses and growing a mustache. He looked his age, as he is now sixty years old, but his physical condition seemed to be good for his age.
I asked him how he spends his time despite his busy schedule with acting. However, it seems that he also enjoys a lot of time with his family and children. He said:
- My wife married me knowing that I am not a doctor or a businessman, but an actor, and my children also know that I am the man who one day has a beard and long hair and another time has a mustache and a different look. This is my life and my family knows that and they got used to it. After filming a movie, I either have no work and have nothing to do until filming the next movie begins, so I disappear for a period that may be long or short. I may be traveling to a faraway country, or a country in the other corner of the world, until I return and the cycle begins again until I get another role in another movie, and so on. This is my life.
• I asked him how his children responded to him, and he said:
My children are used to me being with them. For example, if we go to a restaurant and some of the customers or the restaurant owner recognize me, a kind of commotion occurs around us. My children are used to that. As far as they are concerned, I am just this man who is with them and sometimes drives them to school. There may be other children of their friends with them.
He added:
I learned a lot from my father and I hope my children will learn something from me.
• I asked him about the working relationship between him and director Steven Spielberg, and I told him that in any working relationship there is a conflict of viewpoints or a difference of opinion, so how did they resolve this disagreement when they collaborated on the movie “BRIDGE OF SPIES” starring TOM HANKS and directed by Steven Spielberg? He said:
- There was an understanding on all or most of the points in the film, and before making the novel, he gave me the whole story and I read it, and I had several notes on some situations that I did not agree with, so I went the next day and mentioned this point or that note in the story, and here he brought out the story that he had with him, and he had made big notes on this point and others, as he knows very well about cinema, and we always reach an understanding and the result is good, thank God. - And often the difference between us is that I try to follow the story historically, as happened in the film “BRIDGE OF SPIES,” which tells a story that happened in the Cold War after the fall of Germany in World War II, and he tries to be more entertaining and for the film to be more entertaining than accurate in some historical situations.
• I asked him that he played many roles in many films, so what is the most important role that he liked and in which film? He said:
- You are asking me the same question similar to “Which of your children is your favorite?” A question like this is inappropriate because I love all of my children.
...(The rest is on the pages of the print version of "Al-Mawed" magazine)