Tom Hanks Says He’s Sometimes Been a Jerk on Movie Sets
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If somebody were to ask you: “Who’s the nicest actor in Hollywood?” There’s a pretty good chance Tom Hanks would come to mind. The two-time Oscar winner has a pretty flawless reputation for being kind, collaborative and professional across his five-decade career.
But in a new BBC interview, Hanks made the surprising admission that even he sometimes indulges in rude behavior.
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Hanks was promoting his debut novel, The Making of Another Major Motion Picture Masterpiece, which is inspired by his own career in Hollywood. The story follows the production of a big-budget superhero movie, and one of the characters is an egotistical actor who disrupts and delays filming.
“I have pulled every single one of those moments of behavior myself on a set,” Hanks admits. “Not everybody is at their best every single day on a motion picture set. I’ve had tough days trying to be a professional when my life has been falling apart in more ways than one and the requirement for me that day is to be funny, charming and loving — and it’s the last way I feel.”
The 66-year-old actor added he does make every effort to be on time, however, calling lateness the “cardinal sin” of working on a set, and at one point in the book refers to actors as “cry babies, psychological trainwrecks, on-the-wagon alcoholics, off-the-wagon addicts.”
It’s a confession that manages to be both unexpected yet also perfectly understandable (and also, perhaps, a relief to every other actor out there that the Cast Away star hasn’t set the bar too impossibly high).
Hanks made headlines last year when he angrily shouted at fans after they caused his wife Rita Wilson to trip, but even that outburst was viewed as rather gallant and protective.
In the new interview, Hanks also gave his opinion on who should get to play James Bond (“Understand this, James Bond has a license to kill. I would issue that license to Idris Elba, just based on the work that I’ve seen him do”) and weighed in on the debate over censoring classic books by authors like Roald Dahl to make them less offensive by modern standards (“I’m of the opinion that we’re all grown-ups here. Let’s have faith in our own sensibilities as opposed to having somebody decide what we may or may not be offended by. … I would be against reading any book from any era that says ‘Abridged due to modern sensitivities'”).
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