I’M NO HERO IN REAL LIFE ...BUT MY WIFE IS!
Inferno star Hanks on partner’s cancer fight (and quack doctors who preyed on her)
Tom Hanks has twice played the dashing academic Professor Robert Langdon on screen — the hero of author Dan Brown’s bestselling novels The Da Vinci Code and angels and Demons — and he’s about to take up the role for a third time in Inferno.
In this one, the cool Langdon is on a bulletdodging race against time across Europe to prevent ‘an extinction-level event’.
But Hanks is the first to admit he’s the exact opposite of Langdon, a Harvard university lecturer in religious iconology and symbology, who uses his history knowledge to tackle assassins, solve crimes and save mankind, if not the planet.
‘Let me tell you a story,’ Hanks says, shaking his head — it’s one of his great pleasures in life to tell self-deprecating tales. ‘I was working out in a gym, and a woman on an exercise machine suddenly began fighting for her breath. she collapsed on the floor and . . . I just froze. It was a real deer-in-the-headlights moment — I didn’t know what to do.’
The cool Professor Langdon would have instantly taken charge, of course. But not Hanks. ‘Three other people helped her, while I just stood there. The woman was fine in the end, luckily, not that it was down to me. and when she’d recovered, she looked over at me and said: “Well, thanks, Tom Hanks!” ’
He’s being typically self-effacing of course. When it comes to offering love, strength and practical support in times of personal crisis, Hanks is in the front line — as his wife, Rita Wilson, found when she was diagnosed with breast cancer in December 2014.
‘Tom supported me, encouraged me, gave me hope, determination and purpose,’ she said. she is now happily recovered after a double mastectomy and breast reconstruction, and acknowledges he was her rock during what was a very difficult time.
‘But that wasn’t my burden,’ he points out quickly when we meet in Los angeles. ‘It was my wife’s. I would say that there’s a moment where there’s only one thing to do and that’s to reprioritise everything and do the right thing, and I think I did that.’
HE Adds: ‘But my task wasn’t so great — it was just to be attentive and supportive, and if you can’t do that, well, then you’re a coward.
‘It isn’t brave to be the husband of somebody who’s battling cancer — the brave one is the one who’s actually doing it!’
Tom, dressed in his usual offscreen ‘uniform’ of dark-on-dark — black shirt worn with black jacket and trousers — says: ‘all I can do is to bow down before the courage of my wife.’
as he has previously admitted, he and Rita were fortunate because they could afford the best healthcare in the world.
‘But one thing we found is that there are people who, when they find you have a certain illness, particularly cancer, will immediately try to make money off you.
‘ They do this by pushing procedures that might have a degree of science behind them that might make them accurate, but some are complete quackery. These people only add to the difficulty of what is going on because they are dealing in false hopes.
‘They are predators and it is astounding how much of it is going on.’
But with Rita being given the all- clear — and looking fantastic, as she showed when she and Tom appeared at a fundraiser for the stand Up To Cancer charity in La on september 9 — the closely knit Hanks family has given a collective sigh of relief.
His children are grown-up now — lookalike son Colin, the father of his two granddaughters, olivia and Charlotte, is 38 and a successful actor; Elizabeth, 33, is a writer; Chester (Chet) is an aspiring rapper who has been brave enough to go public with his struggles with addiction — ‘you’ve got to applaud the bravery and honesty when it comes out of your own house,’ Tom says — while Truman, 21, is still in college. no regrets, then? Just one, he says. ‘When my son Colin was small, I was going somewhere and he wanted to come with me. He was upstairs at the window calling down to me: “Dad! Dad!” but I got into the car and drove away. ‘He was only four, and I could have taken a moment and been a decent dad and gone to him. ‘But I was young and stupid. I only had one kid at the time and I thought: “It’s not going to make that big a difference.” and as it turned out, it made a huge difference to me because nothing has been the same since. ‘I regret that moment, because I only had the moment to do it in and I didn’t. and that has haunted me.’ He stops and sighs, looking wistful. ‘ But you know something?’ he says, ‘I mentioned it to him not long ago. I said: “Do you remember that time when you were four and I was getting into the car and you kept calling to me and I didn’t say anything?” ‘and he just looked at me like I was crazy, and said: “no! I don’t remember that!” ’ The key to Hanks’s charm is that he’s an ordinary man who got very lucky indeed, and is never about to let himself forget it. He studied acting at California state University, then paid his dues around the american sitcom scene of the early Eighties.
after just one appearance in Happy Days — playing a character seeking revenge on The Fonz for pushing him — he made friends with one of the show’s young stars, Ron Howard, who played the cheerful red-head Richie Cunningham and who was later to become the acclaimed director of the Dan Brown movies.
ALONG the way, he married and then divorced his college sweetheart, the late actress samantha Lewes, and became a first-time father at 21, which he now acknowledges was somewhat too young.
By 1988, he was a 32-year- old single part-time father with a string of film flops under his belt. His career prospects were looking less than glittering.
‘But that’s why an actor’s life is either the greatest or the worst. Because if you have some degree of faith and confidence in your ability, and a little bit of sheer serendipity, you can walk into a building at 10.15am with nothing, and walk out at 10.27am with the job that will change your life.’
In his case, he says, the film was Big, the fantasy comedy in which he played a small child transported into the body of a man.
‘at the time, I had two kids, I was divorced, I was living in a basic house and I had tax problems. But by the time the film came out I had married Rita, the film actually did well and I remember a specific moment when I thought: “You know what, I’m going to be ok.
‘ “If nothing else happens past this, I will be able to pay my rent and fix my car and buy my kids Christmas presents.” ’
Inferno reunites him with Ron Howard. It will be the fifth time they’ve worked together, including the 1984 comedy splash.
mainly filmed in Florence and Venice, with other scenes shot in Budapest and Istanbul, it opens with Professor Langdon waking up in an Italian hospital with amnesia.
He teams up with a doctor (Felicity Jones) whom he hopes will help to recover his memory.
They embark on a race across Europe — following clues in the medieval poet Dante’s Inferno — with just 48 hours to stop a madman unleashing a virus that would wipe out half the world’s population.
The film is whipping up interest and looks set to become another blockbuster. Hanks — who spoke about Inferno at a press conference in Hollywood yesterday — says he loves the Dan Brown stories and sees Professor Langdon as a saviour, though ‘as a rule I think bad guys are better roles to play’.
He jokes that even when he tries to play a baddie, people insist on seeing the good side of him.
‘I’ve been in movies where I’ve played a killer. and people say: “ah, but you were such a nice killer, Tom.” I say: “no, I killed 12 people.” “ah, but they were bad people, Tom. You did a good thing killing them.”
‘In The green mile I played an executioner. “ah, but you did it in a good way, Tom, you had a conscience about doing it . . .” ’
Hanks turned 60 earlier this year. ‘I’m liking getting older,’ he says. ‘I’ve always felt good at whatever age I’m at. You try to get a good night’s sleep and you try to get some exercise and not take life too seriously. I have diabetes, but I’m controlling my blood sugar and my knees haven’t gone bad.
‘and, listen, I’m a grandfather and I have four fabulous kids. They’re all funny and more or less self-supporting. and I’m still here! I win!’
Inferno will be in cinemas from october 14.