It looks like good guy Tom Hanks has turned trigger-happy since his portrayal of a weary mobster in "Road to Perdition". You can catch him if you can packing heat once again, this time in the hunt for Leonardo DiCaprio...
How was it working for Steven Spielberg? I mean, is it hard to work for someone who is also one of your best friends?
Well, no. It's very honest. We broached that subject the first time we worked together. I said, "Look, you have to be the boss. You have to tell me anything that's wrong." I said, "You can't hurt my feelings. Don't think our friendship is going to be lost because you're coming up to me, saying: 'If you do this again, the movie's going to stink!'"
But how do you keep that professional distance?
I go to work thinking he is my good friend. But he's also the director of "Close Encounters of the Third Kind". I still think, He's the guy that did that!
How about the relationship between you and Leonardo DiCaprio?
We were peers, I think. Leo's an incredibly intelligent guy who's been through a great amount of life experience over the course of the last few years. He's very dedicated and I think he had a very good idea of what he wanted to do and how he wanted to do it.
Tell us about your character, FBI Agent Carl Hanratty...
Hanratty specialises and takes great pride in working bank fraud, forgeries, and he comes across this 'paper hanger'(con artist) who's just doing magnificent things, certainly a step above the normal cheque forger. He makes it his life's mission to track him down and catch him if he can. It's an adventure larger than he is. He treats Abagnale (DiCaprio) as a criminal and he's going to put him in jail. But at the end of the day, he's also a bit worried about this guy's soul. He sees him as perhaps the son he never had - a sort of fragile human being who's worth trying to redeem somehow.
