KUALA LUMPUR: Two-time Oscar winner Tom Hanks has never played a bad guy on the silver screen, and does not think he ever will.
The New York Post reported yesterday that Hanks, 63, admitted that he used his kindness to his advantage.
“I realise, and I used over and over again, the ability to seduce a room, seduce a group of people, and that it started off when I was very young as a self-defence mechanism but then turned into a manipulative kind of thing because I didn’t realise that I was as good at it as I was,” he said.
Hanks added: “And part of that is I am not malevolent. I’m not mysterious. You’re not going to get a huge amount of anger out of me or anything like that. I’m not coming in to dominate a room, but I am coming in to seduce it somehow.”
The Forrest Gump star explained how he used his authentically-agreeable temperament to get ahead in his career.
“I thought the thing to do was to win the moment more than carry through with an idea,” he said.
“I’d come to a meeting, and they’d say, ‘I understand you have problems with the rewrite’. I’d say, ‘No, hell, we can make it work’. That’s a cowardice there. And that’s me being willing to seduce whoever that person is on the other side of the room. It comes off as, ‘Oh, he’s got no problem, he can make it work’.”
Due to his placid personality, Hanks has learnt he can never truly be scary.
“I recognised in myself a long time ago that I don’t instil fear in anybody,” he said. “Now, that’s different than being nice. I think I have a cache of mystery. But it’s not one of malevolence.”
Therefore, Hanks feels he cannot play the villain.
“It’s because I never get them, because bad guys, by and large, require some degree of malevolence that I don’t think I can fake,” he said.
Hanks will portray the beloved American television host Mr Rogers in his upcoming film A Beautiful Day In The Neighbourhood slated fore release next on Jan 23 next year.