4-5_Autumn2013_Life Begins 19/11/2013 16:08 Page 2
showbiz
T
om Hanks thumps down a set of steps into the room, head
thrust forward, arms swinging by his side in slapstick
fashion. It’s quite an entrance and sets the tone for the
interview because, despite the serious nature of his latest movie
Captain Phillips, which details the true story of a container ship’s
captain who was held hostage by Somali pirates, Hanks is keen
to keep things light.
“I was attached to this screenplay by way of the studio route,” the
actor says modestly, when asked about being cast. What he
actually means is that being a two-time Academy Award winner
and, well, Tom Hanks, he can call the shots and dictate who the
director will be - not the other way round. “They [the studio] said
they were looking for a director and when they came around to
Paul Greengrass, I said, ‘Well, that would just be fine and
dandy!” he quips, in that comforting, familiar voice.
A former documentarian, Greengrass has always been drawn to
stories that dig beneath the surface of contemporary events: from
Bloody Sunday, about a British Army massacre in Northern
Ireland, to United 93, about the hijacked 9/11 plane that crashed
near Pennsylvania after passengers thwarted the terrorists. This
made him the perfect helmsman for Captain Phillips, which
proves to be a nerve-jangling, pulse-pounding 134 minutes.
”
Although it’s a multi-layered examination of the hijacking of the
US container ship Maersk Alabama in 2009, at the film’s centre is
the relationship between Captain Richard Phillips and the Somali
pirate captain, Muse (Barkhad Abdi), who takes him hostage.
Throughout Hanks’s 33-year career, which began with minor
roles at the beginning of the Eighties before Ron Howard cast him
in the 1984 mermaid romcom smash Splash, he’s excelled in
diverse roles, depicting seemingly ordinary men facing extreme
crises. There was the Aids-stricken lawyer in Philadelphia, the
astronaut struggling to return to Earth after a moon mission goes
awry in Apollo 13, the World War II captain searching for a
missing soldier in Saving Private Ryan, and the FedEx executive
trapped alone on a desert island in Cast Away.
In Captain Phillips, which looks set to secure Hanks an Oscar
nomination, he once again builds his character from the inside
out, endowing Phillips with a quiet but extraordinary bravery. The
performance builds to an incredibly emotional climax that’s
bound to leave audiences gasping for breath. How does he do it?
“Well, that’s a secret, so I’m not going to give that up,” he replies,
grinning. “If you ask the people that run Coca-Cola for that secret
formula, they’re not going to hand it over to you. But you know, I
like to consider myself some kind of a creative artist and a
professional, and my job is to be able to get there when the
moment comes on the day.”
As well as mastering the emotional complexities of the role,
Hanks faced physical challenges, as two thirds of the movie was
shot on open water. “Before we started shooting, I said, ‘Can I
just get in that lifeboat to see what it’s like?’” he says. After about
three minutes bobbing along, he realised it was going to be a
“particularly authentic hell on earth!”
You know, it’s not the most realistic of moments to walk into
somebody’s house and say, ‘Hi, I’m the Forrest guy, yeah that’s me, and
I will now be playing you in a film whether you like it or not’
The film is not a documentary and Hanks was keen to make that
clear when he first met Phillips. “I told him, ‘Look, I’m going to
say things you never said and I’m going to do things you did not
do, but based on that, let’s get as close to the DNA of the
authenticity as possible’.”
Hanks had conversations with Phillips, and his wife Andrea, a
couple of times at their home in Vermont, America. “You know,
it’s not the most realistic of moments to walk into somebody’s
house and say, ‘Hi, I’m the Forrest [Gump] guy, yeah that’s me,
and I will now be playing you in a film whether you like it or
not’,” says 57-year-old Hanks, whose rubbery features retain a
sense of boyishness, though there’s now a hint of silver around
his temple ̸)!