TOM Hanks, 39-year-old actor, adoring husband, doting father, two-time Oscar winner, teary speech-maker, biggest box office draw in history, nice guy. If the movie-going world has seriously bought into Hanks' latter-day James Stewart persona, so has the actor himself.
When asked whether he felt up to the task of playing astronaut Jim Lovell, heroic leader of the doomed Apollo 13 expedition in 1970, Hanks responded: 'I talked to people who worked on the Apollo programme and they said to a man that Jim was the most pleasant of the astronaut crews, very easy to be around, very relaxed, very laid back, always joking and goofing around.
'Some believed that Jim was just as well suited to being the head of a PR office. So I heard that and thought, there you go, I am the perfect guy to play Jim Lovell.' Runaway ego, or just plain honesty? In order to play nice men like Forrest Gump; Jim Lovell in Ron Howard's new film Apollo 13 ; a string of winsome charmers in Sleepless in Seattle, Big, Splash, Turner and Hooch or even the upright gay lead in Philadelphia ; you have obviously got to believe in your own niceness.
And the result is a billion-dollar box office bonanza.
'I think I have a degree of approachability when it comes down to it,' analyses Hanks. 'I'm not classically handsome, I'm not big and strong, I don't have cold-blooded eyes.
'I just have this squirrely kind of hair and a butt that's usually too big, and I think everybody recognises a bit of themselves in me. Like if this guy can be a movie star, and if this guy can meet Richard Nixon, and if this guy can fly a space ship to the moon, then maybe I can too.' Hanks as the 'ultimate American dream' is tall, dressed very casually in jeans and a white shirt, sports a goatee beard and exudes a professional warmth.
His open arms tell you he would not run away from any question, but you do not ask, because he is too nice.
