Tom Hanks Admits He Uses Kindness To His Advantage

Actor Tom Hanks has revealed that he uses kindness to his advantage while doing anything in his professional or personal life.

Speaking with The New York Times, the 63-year-old Hollywood star opened up about how he chooses his roles and why he is rarely offered to play a negative role in a movie. The Academy Award-winning actor, also known as the nicest guy in Hollywood, confessed that he started using kindness as a “defense mechanism” when he was young and turned it into a manipulative kind of thing because he did not realize how good he was in doing so.

“It started off when I was very young as a self-defense mechanism but then turned into a manipulative kind of thing because I did not realize that I was as good at it as I was,” Hanks explained.

When asked why the world never sees him portraying a villain in any of his movies, the “Bridge Of Spies” star noted that he is rarely offered to play a baddie, because playing a bad guy requires some kind of evilness or “malevolence” that he thinks he doesn’t have or neither can he “fake” it.

Hanks further stated that people can’t get a cosmic amount of anger out of him. And he knows that due to his imperturbable personality, he can never truly be scary or instill fear in anybody.

The “Captain Phillips” star also explained how he manages to make everyone comfortable by his agreeable temperament and how it helps him to get ahead in his professional life.

He shared that whenever he goes for a meeting and the other person asks if he has a problem with re-writes, Hanks immediately says “no” and “seduces” him by his kindness.

“And that’s me being willing to seduce whoever that person in on the other side of the room. In which what I come off as, ‘Oh, he’s got no problem, he can make it work, he’s a good guy to work with,’ et cetera, et cetera,” Hanks said.

The esteemed actor is busy these days promoting his upcoming film “A Beautiful Day In The Neighborhood.” The movie is based on a cynical, award-winning journalist, Lloyd Vogel (Matthew Rhys), who accepted an assignment to write a profile of the beloved television icon Fred Rogers (Hanks). Vogel overcomes his skepticism by learning about empathy and kindness from America’s most beloved neighbor.

The film had its premiere at Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) and received universal acclaim from the critics. The film currently has a 97 percent score on review site Rotten Tomatoes. The critics have also noted that Hanks could get his sixth Best Actor nomination at the 92nd Academy Awards next year because of the film.

“A Beautiful Day In The Neighborhood” is set to open in theaters on Nov. 22, 2019.