Tom Hanks on Surviving Coronavirus: ‘I Had Crippling Body Aches, Fatigue and Couldn’t Concentrate’
The world’s most relatable megastar talks about his Covid-19 experience, his fears for the future, and whether he’s really just so gosh darned nice.
“Welcome to the future, Hadley!” Tom Hanks says from my computer screen, as he makes a quick glance to the right of his own to check my name. “Can you remember the last time you felt comfortable running around with other people?” he asks.
I tell him it was probably the last time I saw him, which was when we were at the Academy Awards in February, where he had ratcheted up his sixth Oscar nomination, for his performance as beloved US children’s TV host Fred Rogers, in the film A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood.
“Remember those carefree days of the Academy Awards? It was like, what’s that place in Italy underneath the mountain that exploded?” Pompeii? “Here we are in Pompeii! Great day! Bit of smoke on the horizon but other than that ...” he says and finishes with a chuckle.
It is because of that modern-day Vesuvius – coronavirus – that Hanks and I are talking through screens, and he is promoting a film that will be streamed on Apple TV+ instead of released in cinemas. Greyhound tells the story of Capt Ernie Krause (Hanks, natch) on his first wartime mission in the Battle of the Atlantic. It is, I tell him, a classic Hanks role, by which I mean he plays a thoroughly good man in extraordinary circumstances. But Hanks takes my comment more literally.
“Look, I’ve played a lot of captains,” he says. “Capt Jim Lovell [in Apollo 13]; Capt Richard Phillips [in Captain Phillips]; Capt Sully Sullenberger [in Sully]; Capt Miller in Saving Private Ryan. But I try to bring to any of these roles, and specifically to Ernie Krause, the question anyone could ask, including you, Hadley: ‘What would I do if I was in his shoes?’ Then it ends up being something more palpable than a museum piece of what it was like to be on this ship in the north Atlantic.” He’s right and it’s hard to think of many – or even any – actors who are as good at establishing such instant empathy with the audience as Hanks. It’s why so many of his films are so comforting to watch: Big, Sleepless in Seattle and A League of Their Own are among my most cherished comfort watches (although the movies for which he won Oscars, Forrest Gump and Philadelphia, are very much not, and would probably be cancelled if they were released today). It’s also why he’s often described as an everyman, because he makes his characters so relatable, not because he himself – a Hollywood megastar who collects typewriters – is relatable, although that distinction is often confused.
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