Tom Hanks wrote, directed and starred in Larry Crowne, a film about a man having a midlife crisis. Alison Jones met him.
When Barack Obama sat down to dinner with the Queen at Buckingham Palace during his recent state visit, among the invited guests was actor Tom Hanks, a distant relative of President Lincoln and the warm-up act at the President’s inauguration,
It’s to be hoped that Tom exhibited better table manners in front of Her Majesty than he does at our interview, as he attempts to answer a question through a mouthful of Claridge’s scone.
“That was ridiculous,” he says, spraying crumbs over his sweater. “I shouldn’t have taken such a big bite.”
He looks briefly chagrined over his momentary lapse in etiquette before bouncing back with a grin, like a puppy who has been told to get down from the sofa who knows he can still sucker you into giving him a belly rub.
It has been a couple of years since Tom has been seen on our screens, playing cat and mouse around Rome trying to prevent the Vatican being anti-mattered out of existence in Angels and Demons.
He made a welcome return to the voice of Woody in Toy Story 3, but other than that he has been preoccupied by redundancy.
As the all-time highest-grossing box office star, not to mention the producer of the financial gold mines that were Mama Mia! and My Big Fat Greek Wedding, Tom hasn’t had to worry about the loss of a regular pay cheque for quite some time.
However, that hasn’t stopped him writing, directing and starring in a film about a middle-aged divorcee who finds himself unexpectedly dumped on the employment scrap heap.
“I can’t help but know that the downturn in the economy affects people personally,” he argues.
“You don’t have to be a property developer whose condo went belly-up or someone who’s trying to buy 19 houses at a time and flip them for a profit to understand if you lose your job and can’t make the payment on your mortgage it’s a personal crisis you’re going through.
“The trick is how can you possibly make a movie about that that doesn’t turn out to be the most depressing film.”
It is true that Larry Crowne is no Grapes of Wrath. Instead it is more a romantic comedy with a re-skilling subtext.
Let go on the excuse that he hasn’t got a college education, Larry enrolls in junior college, swaps his gas-guzzling truck for a scooter, gets a wardrobe makeover and gently starts to woo his jaded, cocktail-loving college tutor, played by Julia Roberts.
“We wanted to make a movie that was going to be funny, if not upbeat then at least an example how to fight cynicism,” he says. “How to combat the depression that goes on with losing one’s job and how to still have faith in oneself. That as long as you make some proactive motions to improve your life things might get better.
“Maybe Larry Crowne could look back and say ‘the best thing that ever happened to me was losing my job’.
“That’s the fantasy of the movie but you cannot deny that if somebody out there has lost it all and says ‘well, I’ve got nothing to do, I’m going back to college’ and ends up falling in love with learning how to be a welder or something, it can happen.”
The redundancy just compounds the mid-life crisis Larry is experiencing as he has split from his wife and is faced with the prospect of losing the house he once thought he would raise a family in.
