INTERVIEW
Having a blast
Actor and self-confessed ‘Space Geek’ Tom Hanks, 67, reveals how he was affected by his parents’ divorce, why he only chooses roles he thinks will be fun, and that he’d clean astronauts’ boots if it meant travelling to the Moon
by KATHRYN KNIGHT
On a hot July day in 1969, a 13-year-old schoolboy called Tom Hanks was lying on the living room floor of his mother’s home in California. ‘I’d been waiting for it all day long, the TV was on one channel, and one channel only,’ the now entirely grown-up movie star Tom Hanks recalls. ‘The rest of the family was coming and going, as they weren’t quite as interested in it as I was.’
‘It’ was the historic moment when man first walked on the Moon – something the teenage Tom could not wait to see.
‘When the moment came, and Armstrong actually stepped off Apollo and said, “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind,” a click went off in my head,’ he says. ‘I knew it was an evolutionary moment for the human species, and I was tickled and delighted that I had witnessed it.’
That delight in man’s exploration of the world beyond the boundaries of our planet has never ended: today we all may think of him as one of our most venerable and beloved leading men, but 67-year-old Hanks is perfectly happy to be known under the title of ‘Space Geek’.
It is what brought the veteran Hollywood star to London to oversee the creation of The Moonwalkers, an hour-long experience opening this month at London gallery Lightroom, offering a unique new perspective on humanity’s past and future voyages to the Moon.