Tom Hanks explains how he “crashed” Steven Spielberg movie ‘Catch Me If You Can’
There have been countless moments of acting brilliance to have come from Tom Hanks over the years, and one of his most memorable has to be his effort in Steven Spielberg’s 2002 biographical crime comedy-drama Catch Me If You Can. Also starring the likes of Leonardo DiCaprio, Christopher Walker, Martin Sheen and James Brolin, the film remains a touchstone of early 2000s cinema.
Based on the semi-autobiographical book of the same name by Frank Abagnale Jr, the film focuses on the former felon (played by DiCaprio), who once claimed that he’d conned millions of dollars by pretending to be a Pan American World Airways pilot and a series of other professions. Hanks, meanwhile, played the FBI agent tasked with capturing Abagnale Jr.
Interestingly, though, Hanks wasn’t always written into the film and once explained that he actually “crashed” into the cast rather than being picked out by Spielberg and the producers. The actor first explained how he normally gets invited to take part in a movie.
“Well when there’s an actual screenplay involved, I get sort of like a call saying ‘Hey, look, I got this thing, and I think it’s really interesting,'” Hanks once told Empire. “And it comes along. Now, it’s gonna be tilted in a direction if it’s coming from Steven. You might have the natural proclivity to think, ‘Boy, I really hope I like this thing. And I really hope I work it out.'”
The truth of the matter with Catch Me If You Can, though, is that DiCaprio and Spielberg had already been working on Jeff Nathanson’s screenplay, during which time Hanks read it. Things transpired that Hanks actually had to contact Spielberg to see if he could work his way into proceedings by offering his own take on the narrative, with the actor noting, “I crashed that movie!”
Hanks explained: “What happened was I read it, and I knew that Leo was gonna be playing Frank Abagnale, and when I read it, the character Carl Hanratty, the FBI guy [stood out to me]. I called up and said, ‘Look, I’m not trying to crash anything, and I’m not trying to stick my head in this, but you have a part in here that is equal to Javert in Les Miserables. You can’t have a movie called Catch Me If You Can without somebody who is constantly chasing him. I’d like to play who’s constantly chasing him.'”
The actor signed off on the matter, “So I honed in on that all on my own. So there you have all those various permutations. Leo gave the okay, and Steven let me in. That’s how that became the three-hander that it was.”
Check out the trailer for Catch Me If You Can below.
