USA TODAY International Edition
Play and laughter are best medicine for Tom Hanks
“Toy Story 4” star’s formula of some form of fun every day makes him a kid at heart.
LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. – Tom Hanks, ever curious, is checking out a mural featuring an array of Disney characters, from animated icons such as Mickey and Minnie to deeper cuts including Ichabod Crane and Roger Rabbit. But there’s no sign of Hanks’ “Toy Story” fan favorite Sheriff Woody. The question arises, half-jokingly, in a tucked-away room in the Hollywood Studios animation building: Shouldn’t the Oscar-winning actor be in this cartoon celebration since he has not only starred in four “Toy Story” movies – including “Toy Story 4” (in theaters Friday) – but actually played Walt Disney?
“That’s right,” Hanks says when reminded of 2013’s “Saving Mr. Banks.” He reveals a Hanksian smile before tearing into a banana. “Well, we’ll survive.”
Since the first “Toy Story” in 1995, the animated franchise has thrived, becoming the “Star Wars” of Disney’s Pixar studio, raking in nearly $2 billion worldwide and launching Disney World’s new Toy Story Land, where a gigantic version of Hanks’
heroic pull-string cowboy greets guests.
Yet Woody, Buzz Lightyear (voiced by Tim Allen) and the gang face fresh obstacles in the fourth film. Now with young Bonnie as his owner, Woody goes on an adventurous road trip that reunites him with Bo Peep (Annie Potts) and takes a spork craft project named Forky
(Tony Hale) under his friendly wing.
Forky wrestles with an existential crisis – is he trash or toy? – while Hanks had one of his own in January after he did his last lines for the movie. “It’s like I had an out-of-body experience,” he recalls. “I thought, ‘Well. Oh, my. Oh, my my. Well, how about that then? How about that.’ There was an interesting feeling of a sudden lack of purpose that took me by surprise.”
Woody always has taken the responsibility of leading his plastic peers, a quality that Hanks, 62, connected with immediately when he recorded his role for the first “Toy Story.”
“I’ve been to parties or dinners where I realize that no one really is steering the focus ... I will take that over,” Hanks says, laughing.
“Woody’s job was literally going, ‘Gather round, guys! It’s my responsibility to make sure we’re all on the same page here!’ I’m that guy. I’m the guy who does that.”
If Hanks were 11 again, the same age the Northern California native figures he first went to Disneyland, he would be a “Buzz guy” rather than a Woody fan. Mainly because of the space ranger thing, Hanks says, but also because Buzz “had structure to him: Wings came out, and he had buttons you pressed.”
Growing up, Hanks watched Walt Disney hosting Disney’s anthology TV series “all the time,” which was key to playing the animation pioneer on screen. Walt and Woody are in Hanks’ annals of wholesome, endearing souls who have made him a comforting cultural icon. Add to them Mister Rogers in the upcoming “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood” (out Nov. 22).
Where Disney was a businessman making movies “that nobody else would make,” Fred Rogers was a different sort of pioneer.
“He had a calling, he had a flock, he had a ministry and it was the one kid that was sitting on the other side of the TV screen from him,” Hanks says. “He could’ve been a millionaire many times over, but he never marketed or copyrighted those characters.
“Disney, he wanted everybody on the planet to see (his movies) and love them. Fred Rogers wanted 3- and 4year-old kids to watch him and feel safe.”
Those kinds of roles, and Hanks’ own folksiness in real life, led to him being dubbed “America’s dad,” a fatherly mantle that he poked fun at in a “Saturday Night Live” monologue but proudly owns, especially in his work.
“Everybody who has ever put something on film has a countenance that is carried through forever,” Hanks says. “It’s unmistakably them, but at the same time, you are willing to follow them to wherever they lead you. I get that and I’m not about to pretend it doesn’t exist.”
Hanks takes that into account when choosing his projects: “I’ve said no to some things because I said, ‘Guys, I’d be faking it.’ Every time you make a movie, there is somebody out there who is seeing you for the very first time. Therefore, you better be connected to what is expected of you.”
His upcoming slate of roles is diverse: a Navy destroyer commander in World War II drama “Greyhound,” an inventor who is the last man on Earth in the sci-fi film “BIOS,” and Colonel Tom Parker in a Baz Luhrmann Elvis Presley biopic. You might see Hanks at one of his wife Rita Wilson’s concerts this summer. “Show business is a great hang, whether you’re working or you’re asking, ‘Hey, are there free sandwiches anywhere?’ ”
While visitors scream riding the Slinky Dog Dash just outside, Hank concedes he’s not really a roller coaster guy. Instead, “the world is my theme park,” he says, adding that there isn’t anything he does to feel like a kid again.
“I live exactly the way I lived when I was 8,” Hanks says with a chuckle. “I’m less confused, I have a little bit less selfloathing, a little less self-consciousness, but every day is some form of play and laughter. I’ve got to take my medicine, but I don’t have some (place to go) and say, ‘Ahh, at last, I get to live carefree!’ Every day is like that.”