Smash hit

No matter what culture, no matter where in the world you live, it's the great thing we combat in life. You are either lonely or you

are not lonely."

His critics often point out that Hanks has mostly played nice guys, and urge him to take on more villains. "Nice guys, bad guys - I try to play somebody who believes in what they are saying more than anything else. I don't sit at home and think, 'Next time I have to change direction.' It would be artificial and it would probably make for a crappy movie. I'm only governed by what I think

is interesting."

But for Hanks, the path he returns to again and again is

loneliness. "Not everybody has been in love, not everybody has experienced passion, not everybody has experienced the friendship you can have with a pet dog. But everybody has been lonely at some point. At the age of 47, I've been through a lot of stuff and, remember, that's one of the reasons I was so enthralled with acting. For me, even if I was going to see a play or a film by myself, I didn't feel like I was alone. There was something that was unfolding up there that brought me into it. And I recognised that."

Those feelings of displacement, so strong while he was

growing up, are still a part of him, even though he is married with a strong family life. "You get to a point where you just work it out. It's a trade-off and the fact is, yeah, my parents got divorced and I

moved around a lot and I was confused and I truly was lonely for a long, long time, but eventually I realised that loneliness turned

into solitude.

"And if I didn't have that period of time in my life I wouldn't have the imagination that I have now. I wouldn't have the drive that I have now. I wouldn't have the sense of humour that I have now. So it's like, 'Hey man, if you can't put it behind you by the time you are 47 you are in big trouble!' Particularly if things are going well. You count your blessings."

Hanks's first marriage was to the actress Samantha Lewis. They met and married while still at California State University, and had two children together: Colin, 26, is an actor, and Elizabeth, 21, is a student who hopes to be a writer. Hanks was often an absent father, away filming when they were growing up, and it wasn't a happy marriage. Hanks admits that he felt terribly guilty when it finally broke down in the early Eighties.