“I was cranky”: Tom Hanks on the director who was “driving me nuts”
Thanks to his status as one of the most beloved figures in cinema and an actor that nobody’s ever seemed to have a bad word to say about, it’s become virtually impossible for audiences to buy into the possibility of Tom Hanks playing a villain.
He’s played plenty of characters with shades of grey, though, but moustache-twirling evil has never been his forte. Part of that is down to the fact he just seems too damned nice, to such a point where not even one of modern Hollywood’s most talented performers has ever given off the impression they’d be able to convince as an irredeemable bad guy.
That doesn’t mean Hanks can’t get pissed off on occasion, and he ended up bristling with indignation on a film that was designed to elicit the exact opposite reaction from audiences. On the surface, the feature in question was a heart-warming romance that had audiences laughing and weeping in the aisle at various points, but the two-time Academy Award winner had his issues with its writer and director.
Classic rom-com Sleepless in Seattle was a huge hit that elevated Hanks’ star even higher, and reaffirmed co-writer and director Nora Ephron as the genre’s most celebrated filmmaker. The collaboration was a fruitful one in terms of acclaim and ticket sales, but even though the screenplay earned an Academy Award nomination, the leading man felt compelled to offer his two cents.
“I was very cranky, particularly when I first met her to do Sleepless in Seattle, because I was really big and, you know, I had some hits under my belt,” he said to The New Yorker, describing Ephron as “very intimidating, right off the bat.” Despite that, Hanks was happy to share his misgivings with an early iteration of the script.
“When we were working on the rehearsals for it, I realised that one of the things that was driving me nuts about the project is that Nora and Delia Ephron, who helped on the screenplay, are sisters, but they are also mothers,” he elaborated. “It was a movie about a father. And I said, ‘You guys are the wrong gender to understand what’s going on in this scene between me and my son.'”
It is not the most sensitive comment to make, but it is one that Ephron took on board. Hanks was of the opinion that his Sam Baldwin wouldn’t “give a rat’s ass what his son thinks about him going out with a woman” because, at the end of the day, he “wants to get laid” first and foremost. Taking the constructive criticism on board, the star called it “a very empowering moment” when the director told him to go ahead and play the scene the way he wanted.
There is of course a touch of irony in a male performer chastising a female writer for the way they’ve penned a male character looking at much of cinema history, but Sleepless in Seattle ultimately benefitted from its collaborative environment.
