Tom Hanks Says Self-Doubt Is 'A High-Wire Act That We All Walk'

TERRY GROSS, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. My guest is one of the most popular actors of our time - Tom Hanks. I'll just do an abbreviated recitation of his films - "Splash," "Big," "Sleepless In Seattle," "Philadelphia," "Apollo 13," "Toy Story," "That Thing You Do," "Saving Private Ryan," "You've Got Mail," "Charlie Wilson's War", "Captain Phillips" and "Bridge Of Spies." He's won two Oscars. His production company Playtone also has a long list of credits, including the new film that Hanks stars in, "A Hologram For The King." It's adapted from the novel by Dave Eggers. Hanks plays Alan Clay, a middle-aged American businessman who's sent to Saudi Arabia, where the king is planning to build a new city in the middle of the desert. Clay's job is to convince the Saudis to let the company he works for provide state-of-the-art IT technology and support for this new city. In this scene, he arrives at a desert location to find his IT team is being housed in a large tent with no food, spotty Wi-Fi and no one to complain to. And the king hasn't shown up.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "A HOLOGRAM FOR THE KING")

TOM HANKS: (As Alan Clay) The king is not coming today, so you guys can just relax.

DAVID MENKIN: (As Brad) Shouldn't we call corporate and let them know the conditions here are untenable?

HANKS: (As Alan Clay) No Brad, we should wait until I talk to Karim Al-Ahmad at 3 o'clock.

UNIDENTIFIED ACTRESS: (As character) Do you know why we're not in that building?

HANKS: (As Alan Clay) Well, maybe all the vendors are in here. And maybe we're just the first.

MENKIN: (As Brad) Kind of weird being growing in them being out here.

HANKS: (As Alan Clay) It's a brand-new city. It's uncharted territory, and we are the trailblazers.

UNIDENTIFIED ACTRESS: (As character) Where are we supposed to eat?

HANKS: (As Alan Clay) Guys, come on. We are in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia with the deserts and the camels and the sheikhs and the tents.

UNIDENTIFIED ACTRESS: (As character, screams) Oh my God, are you OK?

HANKS: (As Alan Clay) Yeah. Don't you know they can only kill me with a golden bullet? Golden bullet - you know, you get it? It's "Lawrence Of Arabia."

UNIDENTIFIED ACTRESS: (As character) Who?

GROSS: Tom Hanks, welcome back to FRESH AIR.

HANKS: Wonderful to be here, Terry.

GROSS: So what was it about the Dave Eggers novel that made you want to adapt it into a film?

HANKS: Well, first, it's the dilemma that Alan Clay is in, which is the dilemma I think of our time. If you're going to sum it up in one word and one word only, you would say Alan Clay is dealing with China - the fact that China has taken away the companies that he's worked for, the living that he used to make. And it's representative then of all the other failings that he's experienced in his life - he's divorced; he's got a kid he can't afford college - college for. And now he's now taken whatever skill set he had, which is really basically selling things, and he is going to have to go off to a place as alien on the planet Earth as I think Mars is in the solar system, the kingdom of Saudi Arabia - accent on kingdom.

GROSS: So what did you identify about this person who is emotionally and geographically alone and lost, who's lost his confidence?

HANKS: It's...

GROSS: It's kind of the opposite of the position we think of you as being.

HANKS: Well, you know, I have been alone in a lot of hotel rooms around the world for long periods of time in which I know I have to get up in the morning and create something that I may have an instinctive ability to do or may fail miserably at. I do recognize that sensibility of 3 o'clock in the morning in a foreign land in which you have to have a passport in your briefcase in order to allow yourself entrance and exit. That is one aspect of it.

The other one is I think something that is real to all of this - the shark terror of a loss of confidence in ourselves. No matter who we are, no matter what we've done, there comes a point where you think how did I get here and am I going to be able to continue this? When are they going to discover that I am, in fact, a fraud and take everything away from me? It's a high-wire act that we all walk, and I do this in the work that I do because there are days when I know that 3 o'clock in the - tomorrow afternoon, I am going to have to deliver some degree of emotional goods. And if I can't do it, that means I'm going to have to fake it. And if I fake it, that means they may catch me at faking it. And if they catch me at faking it - well, then it's just doomsday.

GROSS: So you shot in the desert of Morocco. What were some of the things that went wrong in the desert?

HANKS: Well, you have your average sandstorm. That's a fascinating thing - that literally comes in like they know it on the weather. They say tomorrow there will be a sandstorm, and it will last for 18 hours. And sure enough in the morning, there is a thick orange cloud. There is the finest particles of sand, more like chalk or flour that seeps in through every crack in the window, underneath every door sill. I went back to my hotel room. We were shooting out in the middle of the desert near a place called Tan-Tan, Morocco. But we were very much out in as desert-y (ph) as you could possibly ask for. Everything in my room was covered with a fine layer of writ golden/orange writ. So that wreaked havoc with some of the eyeballs of the crew and some of the sprockets of the machinery. There is that, which is - you know, it's kind of an adventure actually in order to be a part of.

There was also the - Morocco is not unlike Saudi Arabia in that it is also a kingdom. A king runs the place. So it has the patina of being a recognizable - almost a nation with, you know, Western customs and - you know, there's Burger Kings and things like that or Pizza Huts. But it is also still very much an Islamic nation. My hotel room had a view of the biggest mosque I believe in all of North Africa, if not maybe the second-biggest mosque in the world there in Casablanca. Now, you think well, that's an intimidating prospect. But we ended up shooting in it (laughter). So we used it as a location for one of the - a couple of the scenes from our movie. So right there it's like it's a mosque. Are we allowed to be there? Well, in fact yes, you are. In fact, you can bring your movie crew and shoot a scene in there.

GROSS: My guest is Tom Hanks, and he stars in the new movie "A Hologram For The King," adapted from a novel by Dave Eggers.

GROSS: So the film was produced by your production company, Playtone. Why did you start your own production company?

HANKS: I didn't want to be the actor who just sat at home and waited for the phone to ring. I was very lucky that Jonathan Demme directed "Philadelphia."

And through that, I met the man who is now my producing partner, Gary Goetzman, who has worked long and hard with Jonathan on all the movies that Jonathan has made. Jonathan said, well, if you really want to do something, why don't you guys start producing? You should get together with Gary and produce some stuff and make it - and from that union came - from that suggestion came "That Thing You Do!," which was the first thing I wrote and directed as a film. And that then began a constant state of creativity.

GROSS: So not only did Playtone, your production company, come out of "That Thing You Do!," the title came out of it, too, because in "That Thing You Do!" - it's a movie about a band, and you play an A&R guy from a record label who signs the band and tries to kind of bring them into the big time and - how did you come up with Playtone? You wrote the script.

HANKS: I did...

GROSS: ...How did that become the title for the record company?

HANKS: I was trying to come up with what was the blandest, most odd...

GROSS: (Laughter).

HANKS: ...Kind of, like, merchandising hit thing. And there was - there used to be a record player that you could buy for kids and every kid wanted. It was called a Close 'N Play Record. You would just put a record on the turntable, you would close the lid and somehow, magically, the needle would land in the groove.

And so I took that and turned it into Playtone. But I never thought anything of it until I saw what the graphic artist with the name. When you make a movie as a director, they'll throw you all this reference material. They'll say, hey, you need to pick out a logo for the company, Playtone, so we can start putting it up on the walls and use it in the stationery and what have you. And as soon as I saw the logo that they had I said, oh, well, if I ever form a company, I've got to call it Playtone.

GROSS: Yeah, yeah. So I love that film. I wonder why you never wrote and produced another theatrical release again.

HANKS: Well, in fact, I made another movie called "Larry Crowne." But there is value in the affection, I think, that a filmmaker has for the subject matter. And 1964 was a very, very powerful year for me because I was a conscious being who witnessed the - as any kid did, I was 7 years old - the assassination of John F. Kennedy. And I was confused for months by what had happened to the country, but also by the demeanor of every adult that was in my life. There was a sadness. There was a crippling mystery that had gone on because of the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

There were still dark clouds and furrowed brows of my dad and the teachers and their friends and every adult that I knew. And to be 7 years old - there was like a vibe, an eggshell vibe, that was part of daily life. And I was uncomfortable by it, and I was saddened by it, and - but I was also mystified by it.

Then on February 11 of 1964, The Beatles were on television, and it all went away before the first commercial break of "The Ed Sullivan Show." To see these guys on TV in which everybody on the planet stopped what they were doing in order to watch - 1964 became, I think, the most joyous year of my life, and it was all because of them and everything that followed. So when I began having these stories rattle around inside my head, I selfishly wanted to re-create that same joy that I experienced as a 7-year-old kid in February and March and April and the entire summer of 1964.

GROSS: But you wrote it from the point of view of, like, teenagers in a band. And they're at this turning point of their lives 'cause they're teenagers entering adulthood or maybe college or maybe the military and maybe fame. And, like, you don't know through most of the movie which direction this is going to go in. And you're the person who's kind of, like, experienced in it - you're the A&R guy.

So why did you choose to do it from the point of view as a band? I assume you love music, in part because of this movie, and also, like, your company has produced the telecasts of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Inductions. (Laughter) So...

HANKS: Gary - my producing partner, Gary, is - he's got all sorts of gold records from when he produced records for people like Robert John, "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" - he's done, like, Smokey Robinson records, so he is well-versed in the music business. Some time in not too long before I started writing the movie, I heard the saga of a drummer by the name Jimmie Nicols (ph). Do you know the name Jimmie Nicols at all?

GROSS: No, I don't.

HANKS: Well, here's the deal. Jimmie Nicols was, you know, a hired-hand drummer in the British music scene. And when The Beatles did their Asian and Australian tour, Ringo Starr got sick - tonsillitis or something - and he could not make a certain number of dates in Australia and Japan. So he became the drummer of The Beatles for a section of their tour. Jimmie Nicols, live from the Budokan with The Beatles.

And I saw photographs of him, and I saw a little bit of footage of this guy picked out of total obscurity to play drums between three of the most famous musicians in the world at the time. John, Paul and George were up front, and Jimmie was playing the drums. And I just thought, what did that guy experience...

GROSS: (Laughter).

HANKS: ...For a few months? You know, he was put in the same clothes, he rode in the same cars, he was on the back of the same trucks - he was treated like one of The Beatles. Because...

GROSS: ...And I don't know his name (laughter).

HANKS: And you don't know his name. And I just thought, well, that is a brand of serendipity that might be the backbone in order to put into this movie that I wanted to make that was about music, that was about growing up. So what happens in "That Thing You Do!" is Guy Patterson has to replace the drummer in The Wonders because he broke his arm, and it's because of that serendipity, that circumstance, that he ends up having six of the greatest months of his life. So it was taking something that had happened in real life and turning it to my own devices.

GROSS: If you're just joining us, my guest is Tom Hanks. He stars in the new movie, "A Hologram For The King," which is adapted from a Dave Eggers novel. Let's take a short break, then we'll talk more. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR, and if you're just joining us, my guest is Tom Hanks. He stars in the new movie "A Hologram For The King," which is set in Saudi Arabia and is adapted from a novel by Dave Eggers. What was the first record you ever bought?

HANKS: Well, I never bought 45s. The first record I actually bought was an LP named "Aerie," as in an eagle's nest - "Aerie" by John Denver (laughter). So I didn't buy - I didn't get around to that until - I was not a - the radio gave me all the musical satisfaction that I needed. The big deal for me was getting my first AM/FM radio. It was by a company called Sun Mark. It was made in Korea. And that now is actually - is now known as Samsung. But it was called Sun Mark at the time. And to have a radio of my own next to my bed where I could go back and forth between my favorite stations out of Oakland in San Francisco, that was the bigger deal for me.

GROSS: Did you ever put it under your pillow and pretend to be sleeping when you were actually listening to the radio?

HANKS: My parents were so disinterested in what was going on in my bedroom...

GROSS: (Laughter).

HANKS: ...That I didn't have to pretend anything. I could stay up as late as I wanted to.

GROSS: Is that a good thing or a bad thing?

HANKS: Well, actually, no, it was a very good thing. I mean, my parents were so - my dad was married to the love of his life finally. It took him three marriages to get there. But when they landed together, they were so busy having fun and dealing with their own Sturm und Drang that I could have been a tenant who lived downstairs.

GROSS: Oh, gosh (laughter).

HANKS: I just came and went on my own accord, and they never said boo. There was one time in high school I'd had the flu, and I spent two weeks at a friend's house. And when I finally came home, my dad said where've you been? I said, oh, I had the flu. I slept at Kirk's (ph) house. He was like, oh, I figured you'd take care of yourself. So that brand of freedom is not - you know, it wasn't a cruel brand of disinterest, but they were just very busy doing other things.

GROSS: Oh, that's hilarious (laughter).

HANKS: Yeah, that along with attention deficit disorder made me what I am today.

GROSS: (Laughter) Did you have attention deficit disorder?

HANKS: I think - don't all American boys my age or all Americans have some degree of an attention deficit disorder? Understand, I knew what time it was by what was on television. I don't think there was a clock in our house - and I never had a watch - because if "Love Of Life" was over, it was time to go to school.

GROSS: (Laughter).

HANKS: If the "Hogan's Heroes" - when the "Hogan's Heroes" hour was halfway through, I knew that dinner was going to be ready upstairs. And because of that, about every 12 minutes when the commercial came on, my attention went somewhere else. And I think I still have trouble - I have to be utterly hypnotized by something to truly concentrate on it for anything more than 20 minutes at a time.

GROSS: What did you want to watch? What were your favorite TV shows that made a lasting impression on you?

HANKS: "Then Came Bronson," it was on for one year. It starred Michael Parks as an iconoclastic reporter who gives up everything and rides across the country on a motorcycle. It was like a one-man version of "Route 66."

GROSS: (Laughter).

HANKS: It was a very odd television show that was on for one season on NBC. And I just thought it was the hippest thing in the world 'cause sometimes there'd be no dialogue in one of the shows. It was not like an episode of "Mannix" or "Medical Center" or "Gunsmoke." It was something else.

GROSS: So you were probably too young to have seen the real "Route 66" in its time?

HANKS: I remember it vaguely, but I was too young to appreciate it. When I was really young, it was "Fireball XL5," it was "Mayor Art." And actually, in Oakland, Calif., KTVU Channel 2 was an independent station, and it started running a very intelligent movies on Saturday nights and Sundays. It was called the premier movie. And there, all of a sudden, I'm seeing a "Marriage Italian Style" on Channel 2, you know, with commercials on it.

GROSS: Yeah.

HANKS: I remember seeing Kurosawa's "Seven Samurai..."

GROSS: Wow.

HANKS: ...And "La Strada" on TV. And I - look, these things all went over my head. But without a doubt, this was counterprogramming that hit a very fertile audience, which was my brain. And I think actually the time I spent alone watching television when I was in, you know, from fifth grade on, that was really quite an education for me because I was alone and I was (laughter) for 20 minutes at a time, I was very concentrated on the subject matter.

GROSS: So in a lot of your movies, you portray men in life-and-death situations. You know, war in "Saving Private Ryan." You produced "Band Of Brothers," also about World War II. You were Jim Lovell in "Apollo 13." You were the captain of a ship taken over by pirates in "Captain Phillips."

You're finishing production on a movie called "Sully" in which you play the pilot who remarkably landed - made an emergency landing on the Hudson River after birds flew into the engines of the plane, disabling the engines. So these are men with, like, nerves of steel under pressure. Do you feel like you have ever been tested like that in your own life?

HANKS: I think - first of all, they are not men with nerves of steel. The thing that all has attracted me to all of those characters is they are fighting the terror that is inside them. For example, in all the reading - much of the research I did for "Saving Private Ryan" was the terror that men in command felt in combat - and I have this verbatim from a number of people - is that they were afraid of making the mistake that was going to get other people killed.

Now, that's a huge burden of command, and it's something that you have to fight and tamp down. And you can't even begin - you can't allow yourself a moment of hesitation. And that faith in oneself is a very - that's the difference between success and failure. And it's not easy to do. And all of these guys have some degree of accomplishment, but it's been learned and earned at the same time. You know, no one is made a captain of a cargo ship without, you know - without an extraordinary amount of experience behind them. And that brand of terror or loss of your own self-confidence, look, that's something that everybody goes through at some point.

I have - (laughter) my life has never been in jeopardy ever once. But the artistic creative process of one is still based on your ability to fight down those doubts of yourself. And you have to move forward, and you have to move forward with a degree of confidence. And you cannot sweat too much the possibility that you are making a wrong mistake.

It sounds almost like a paltry comparison to a lot of the characters that I've been able to play in these big movies, but, you know, that type of battle of self-worth is something that everybody goes through at some point. And the fact - look, I'm not a muscle-bound guy. I don't strike fear in the hearts of everybody. You know, when I have to, I try to unleash some sort of inner charm monster in order to get out of any uncomfortable circumstance.

GROSS: (Laughter).

HANKS: So that's about the only decent self-defense mechanism I have that I'm any good at it. But for all the characters I play, I think - I would like to think that the audience is able to get the same thing that I seek for from an audience, which is the question of seeing a movie and they go, what would I do? What mistakes would I be afraid of making in the same circumstance?

GROSS: My guest is Tom Hanks. He stars in the new film "A Hologram For The King." After we take a short break, we'll talk about the different parents and different religions he grew up with. I'm Terry Gross, and this is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. Let's get back to my interview with Tom Hanks. He stars in the new movie, "A Hologram For The King," which is adapted from a David Eggers novel and is set in Saudi Arabia. He plays an American businessman who's lost his confidence and is trying to close a deal with the king. Hanks is famous for a range of roles from romantic comedies to heroic figures in films like "Bridge Of Spies," "Captain Philips," "Apollo 13" and "Saving Private Ryan."

You've had your wars in terms of movies. You've never fought in one in real life. When you were introduced to war through your parents' generation and through TV movies, what was your reaction to the possibility that maybe one day you'd have to fight in one?

HANKS: I get this question a lot because yeah, I - not only do I go to it in my work, but I also read about it constantly, about the war in the war years. It is because when I was a kid - I grew up in Alameda, Calif. I spent a lot of years there. And the Alameda Naval Air Station meant that most of my friends were in the Navy, their dads were in the Navy, their parents were dealing with that.

And this was during Vietnam, so I had - my schoolmates all had dads on the USS Ranger and the Iwo Jima and The Enterprise - aircraft carriers and what have you - and they were all in the Gulf of Tonkin, and they were flying missions in this war that was going on. That was in parallel to the reality that a couple of teachers that I had - and also an awful lot of the adults - is that they talked about the war in literally a three-act structure. And they described their lives - they told stories about their youths that were divided up into act one, before the war - well, you know, before the war, I lived in Los Angeles. And before the war, my dad was a farmer.

And before the war, I was enrolled at Mills College. Then they will tell stories about act two of their lives, which is well, that was during the war. And that was during the war meant - is that we were in stasis. We didn't know what was going to happen. I found myself - my dad found himself studying hydraulic engineering for the Navy in Pocatello, Idaho, and then was shipped off to someplace in the South Pacific. And during those five years, the future was a big X. It was a mathematical formula that had not been seen through.

Then they go on with the rest of their lives, and it's act three. And it was always well, you know, that was right after the war. Well, after the war, I became a dry cleaner. And after the war, I got my teaching credential. And after the war, you know, I got married and had kids. Or after the war, so-and-so had developed a terrible alcohol problem and was never the same when he came back.

GROSS: So in terms of growing up surrounded by people who had been in the war and whose lives were divided by before, during and after the war, what did that leave you with in terms of what war means and whether you really were like, your parents said, really lucky to be spared? Or did part of you think, that sounds like such an incredible, life-changing experience, I hope to have something that dramatic in my life someday?

HANKS: I never hoped to have something that dramatic in my life.

GROSS: Yeah.

HANKS: What I did recognize is that something like that - and I guess it's all relative for all of this - might have been good for me. And I use the word good in the form of it would've been transforming for me. Let me tell you, when we were doing "Forrest Gump" in South Carolina, which was right next to Parris Island - you know, Camp Lejeune, south - the Marine Corps training camp. We got Capt. Dale Dye, who was our adviser - took myself and Mykelti Williamson and Gary Sinise, and we went off and we toured Parris Island. And I saw guys who were probably anywhere from 12 to 15 years younger than me going through their boot camp. And it is hot. And they are miserable. And they're getting yelled at, and they look like they're scared and exhausted.

And I could not help but think, you know, that would've been good for me. If I had been an 18-year-old who had join the Marines and had to go through 13 weeks of boot camp, without a doubt that would've been a transformative experience for me that - yeah, I think about that, sure. All the time.

GROSS: That might be true if you lived, if you had all your arms and legs when it was over, if you didn't become an alcoholic, if you didn't have posttraumatic stress disorder.

HANKS: The story that has to come out now is all of what you're talking about, that yes, of - I've talked to guys with missing limbs. And I visited with a bunch of wounded guys a while back, and there was two guys that had lost limbs and they were still in wheelchairs. One guy was going to be in the hospital for probably about another three years, missing two arms and - two legs and an arm. And I was talking to another fellow who was in the same condition, suffered the same wounds, but he was going to be getting out in a couple of weeks. And I said, well, what's the difference?

You know what the difference was between the two of them? Infection. And I thought, so let me get this straight. This isn't just about the fact that an IED took off your limbs and almost killed you. It's about that same IED picked up germs and microbes from the dirt and the dust of Afghanistan or Iraq and put it so deep inside you that your body is now fighting centuries-old infections that still might kill you because we haven't figured out a way in order to make your - itself infection-free.

Look, it's a lot easier and it's a lot happier in order to talk about and then they won the war and went home and became dry cleaners. But it's something else that when those infections are inside you - how in the world does somebody come back from Afghanistan after three tours and just pick up right where they left off? I think that boy, you're in the high country when you're talking about that kind of stuff that rattles around inside your brain.

GROSS: So I remember the first time you and I talked in 1998, when you were on FRESH AIR, you were talking about how in the early days of your career, you read parts as the weird guy, the insecure guy who compensated for his insecurity by being funny. And you said they were pretty one-dimensional characters. How did you make the transition from that kind of role to playing these, you know, kind of, like, courageous men, like the men we've been talking about? Courageous men who might've been scared inside, but they rose to the occasion?

HANKS: I enjoyed the confidence of, actually, Penny Marshall. I had made two movies with her. The first one was "Big," which, (laughter) you know, I...

GROSS: You're an over-grown boy in that.

HANKS: ...I played an over-grown 13-year-old, which your listeners might recognize from today's interview, as a matter of fact. But then we - I fell into a movie called "League Of Their Own," in which I was playing essentially a washed-up big leaguer.

And after I'd had that experience, I was still in my mid-30s. I had an awful lot of opportunities and offers in order to go off and make a certain type of film, which is, you know, some brand of light comedy, some brand of, you know, quasi-romantic drama that all ended up being under the rubric of will I ever find the person of my dreams? And it was a lucrative living, without a doubt, and there were some people there were going to be exciting to work with, and I had stacks and stacks of versions of those movies that were kind of just versions of other people that I'd played before.

And after playing Jimmy Dugan, the washed-up baseball player in "League Of Their Own" - I don't think I have an awful lot of moments of clarity in regards to anything, but I did sit down with my crackerjack team of show business experts - a guy named Richard...

GROSS: (Laughter).

HANKS: ...And I said, you know, I just don't want to play these guys anymore. And I said no for quite a while. I said no for about a year to things that I could've done instead. And the end result of - out of out that - literally that conversation came the - sort of the first movie of my modern era, I think, which was "Apollo 13." And then along - going to that, I think I established a degree of credibility so that other people were willing to throw their lot in with me and trust me in order to take other films to their fruition.

GROSS: Well, I think we need to take a short break here, so let me reintroduce you. My guest is Tom Hanks. He's starring in the new movie "A Hologram For The King," which is set in Saudi Arabia, and it's adapted from a Dave Eggers novel. We'll be right back after we take a short break. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR, and if you're just joining us, my guest is Tom Hanks. He's starring in the new movie "A Hologram For The King," which is adapted from a Dave Eggers novel and is set in Saudi Arabia. So I want to ask you something about your childhood. When you were young, your parents divorced.

HANKS: A lot (laughter).

GROSS: Yes, I'm talking about the first divorce. Right (laughter).

HANKS: Yeah, well that - yeah, they pioneered the marriage dissolution laws for the state of California, yeah.

GROSS: (Laughter).

HANKS: It was like when I went to school, I was divorced.

GROSS: (Laughter).

HANKS: I was - you know, the only people who had divorces were, like, Elizabeth Taylor and Zsa Zsa Gabor...

GROSS: (Laughter).

HANKS: ...And my mom and dad. It was a big deal.

GROSS: I know what you mean. It was pretty taboo back then.

HANKS: Yeah, yeah.

GROSS: Yeah, so what year was this?

HANKS: My parents separated when I was 4 or 5 - 1960, '61?

GROSS: Right, OK. And you went with...

HANKS: For the first time.

GROSS: You went with your father, and that was really unusual back then. Did your father insist on taking the kids? Did your mother reject having you? Or did you get to choose yourself, like...

HANKS: No, it was...

GROSS: How did that work out?

HANKS: It literally came down to the - it's just simple. There was only one way that it could economically work. My mom and dad - God bless them - you know, they were together for a while. But when it was time for them to divide, boy, did they know it. They needed to break up.

And we were not traumatized by the reality of them getting divorced. We were just confused by the geography of it all because my mom could not afford to have four kids. My younger brother was born - she could take care of the baby. And my dad, he at that time, he had to go off to Reno and establish residency for six weeks. And he had a job, so he could afford to take the three of us. And so off we went, and we ended up living with a lady and she had kids. And they ended up getting married. And they were married for a couple years.

And it was not painful other than it was occasionally lonely because I was the youngest of the group. And, you know, everybody else went off to school, and I was left to my own devices for a couple hours every day. But really, it was just confusing because, look, Oprah was not on TV at that point. And nobody over the age of 27 knew how to communicate their feelings or explain to their children what was going on all around them.

GROSS: (Laughter) Right.

HANKS: So we just kind of, like, went with the flow. And we moved around an awful lot. And by the time I was 10 - I was actually kind of proud of this, as a matter of fact. By the time I was 10, I had lived in 10 different houses.

GROSS: Whoa.

HANKS: I'd had 10 different homes - two sets of families, a bunch of stepbrothers and stepsisters. And we now - my dad was starting all over again with a woman who turned out to be the great love of his life. His - my - how do I put this? My second stepmother - yeah, my second step mom and her kids. And of course, then we - that happened right in the teeth of the beginning of the 1960s, so we had all of that in order to go through as well.

GROSS: Well, having several families also exposed you to several religions. I think I have this right that your mother was Catholic...

HANKS: Yes.

GROSS: ...Your stepmother became a Mormon for a while...

HANKS: Yes.

GROSS: ...You had an aunt who was a Nazarene. Did you try all those religions yourself?

HANKS: We were forced to in a couple of circumstances. I was the only one in my family who did not get a first communion 'cause my parents broke up before they could put me into catechism. But I remember masses in Latin. But I thought, of course, well, that's what church is.

But then these guys, literally like "The Book Of Mormon," they came around in white short-sleeve shirts and black ties and they rode bicycles. And they convinced my dad's second wife that being a Mormon was just the greatest thing in the world. And my dad said, you know what? If you - Whinnie (ph) - that was her name - sweet lady. He said if you want your kids to be baptized in the Mormon Church, you go right ahead. But no way are my kids going to go through it.

GROSS: (Laughter).

HANKS: So we just kind of, like, sat around and enjoyed some good, Mormon family home evenings that were choreographed by, you know, Elder Paul (ph) and Brother Bob (ph) and a few other people who knew magic tricks with coins and were really funny. And all the time, my dad would sit in the living room with his hands around a can of beer that were...

(LAUGHTER)

HANKS: ...Holding the label to himself. Then we lived - when we lived with my aunt - my dad was separating from his second wife, and we went and lived with his sister. And my dad grew up in a very, very strict Methodist household that had then transformed, for his sister, then into the Nazarene church. And that was - they didn't speak in tongues, but it was a very strict, fundamental Christian social circle that we lived in.

We went to church. Church on Sundays was, like, two hours. Bible school was a very prescribed thing. Dinner time was the parson coming over with - and he would - Parson, would you do the honor of us asking the blessing? My sister and my brother and I would roll our eyes 'cause that meant that guy was going to talk for 40 minutes. You know, he'd have his head bowed and an operatic voice would come out - dear heavenly father, we ask (unintelligible) blessings on the Hanks family. Here we are - he would talk for - and with just eyes closed, the food's getting cold. We're all hungry. We didn't quite really understand what was going on.

GROSS: So something about your health. You've publicly said that you, not long ago, were diagnosed with type 2 diabetes...

HANKS: Yes.

GROSS: ...Which means, you know, having to regulate your diet. Are you obsessive about your body when something goes wrong? Or can you just kind of keep that in the background and not worry about it?

HANKS: Oh, I wish I was obsessive about my body. You know, I don't worry about it 'cause you always kind of feel normal. Type 1 diabetes is a very serious thing. Type 2 diabetes, I think for me is like a lifestyle malady. I knew that I grew up with a horrible diet, the American diet of candy bars, milkshakes and hamburgers and fries. But I was still surprised when after many, many visits to the doctor and being told I don't like the level of your blood sugars, young man - Tom, you've got to do something about these blood sugars. And when I was told (laughter) my doctor said, well, congratulations, you've made it.

GROSS: (Laughter).

HANKS: And I said, what? What did I do? He said, you now officially have Type 2 diabetes. And all I could think of - well, what did I do? Well, what I did was I ate very badly and I didn't take any of that stuff seriously.

Now - look, I'm going to be 60 years old this summer. It's time - I want to be around for at least another 20 years. So I've gotten much more rigorous about what I eat and how - the exercise that I get. And the truth is, luckily for me, and I think for a lot of people that do have type 2 diabetes, you can control it with what you put in your body and how much you sweat out. I've been told by my doctors that if you weigh exactly these many pounds, you will not have type 2 diabetes, which is the horrifying and dangerous conceit of putting my fate in my own hands.

(LAUGHTER)

HANKS: Which means I'm just going to have to pony up and start taking it seriously. I'm lucky, of course...

GROSS: You're putting this in the future tense as if you hadn't started doing it yet.

HANKS: Well, no, I've been doing it for the last five years but with varying levels of concentration.

GROSS: So I've saved the most meaningful question for the end.

HANKS: (Laughter) Oh, OK. All right, I'll work up some tears for you if I can.

GROSS: Your tweets are often pictures of, like, one glove or, like, one sock on the street or in the road (laughter).

HANKS: They're sad little items, aren't they?

GROSS: Yes, why are you interested in taking pictures of that? I...

HANKS: Because I...

GROSS: Yeah.

HANKS: I see the story there. Someone - the saddest thing is when you see a little girl's lost pink mitten or a little glove with those tiny, little fingers in it. And that means some little girl now has a mismatched glove at home. And I just think who are the people that lost it? How did they lose it and in the circumstance? And I see almost like a haiku, like, story behind every one of them. Sometimes they're big, manly expensive leather gloves...

GROSS: (Laughter).

HANKS: ...You know, something from Hammacher Schlemmer‎ or Barneys or something. And other times they're little happy mittens with Snoopys on them or something like that. And I always think, who passed by this way and left an image? I kind of, like, look at it as an urban archaeology in which we can put together the stories of they who passed before us by the gloves that they've lost. And sometimes the position that they're in - so many gloves that I see on the ground - and it usually happens after the thaw of winter. You know, once the snow starts clearing. And a little glove will look just like a little man walking with its little fingers that look like legs.

GROSS: (Laughter).

HANKS: It looks like the glove is trying to make its way home to be reunited with its lost brother or sister.

GROSS: Tom Hanks, it's just been fabulous to talk with you. Thank you so much.

HANKS: I've really enjoyed it, Terry. Thanks for having me.

GROSS: Tom Hanks stars in the new movie "A Hologram For The King." Coming up, Ken Tucker reviews Sturgill Simpson's new concept album about becoming a father. That's after a break. This is FRESH AIR.
TERRY GROSS, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. Our rock critic Ken Tucker has a review of Sturgill Simpson's new country album. Simpson attracted a lot of attention for his 2014 album "Metamodern Sounds In Country Music," a title that suggested he was working in more alternative forms of the country genre. Ken says that on the new album, called "A Sailor's Guide To Earth," Simpson goes even further in his range and experimentation.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "ALL AROUND YOU")

STURGILL SIMPSON: (Singing) There will be days when the sun won't shine, when it seems like the world is against you. Don't be afraid when life is unkind. You can let go of anything if you choose to. As time slips away...

KEN TUCKER, BYLINE: There's a sense in which Sturgill Simpson's new concept album about becoming a father, something he did in 2014. "A Sailor's Guide To Earth" opens with an charmingly bombastic addressed to his son's arrival into the world. After some orchestral throat clearing, Simpson gives his son nothing less than what his song title refers to as "A Welcome To Earth."

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "A WELCOME TO EARTH")

SIMPSON: (Singing) Hello my son. Welcome to Earth. You may not be my last, but you'll always be my first. Wish I'd done this 10 years ago, but how could I know, how could I know? But the answer was so easy...

TUCKER: This is not your typical country music, is it? Which is also not to say it isn't. There have been charges that Simpson has abandoned country music on this album, which includes a very sincere cover of the Nirvana song "In Bloom," yet that charge is disproven every time he opens his mouth.

His Kentucky locutions anchor his sailor's guide to country music as surely as Dan Dugmore's steel guitar does. Simpson also reconnects country to its affinity for rhythm and blues in a song such as "Keep It Between The Lines in which he offers that kid of his some life advice.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "KEEP IT BETWEEN THE LINES")

SIMPSON: (Singing) Don't turn mailboxes into baseballs. Now, don't get busted selling at 17. Most thoughts deserve two or three more. Motor oil is motor oil, just keep the engine clean. Keep your eyes on the prize. Everything will be fine long as you stay in school, stay off the hard stuff and keep between the lines.

TUCKER: Listening to this nicely funky song powered by the Dap-Kings horn section, I would be confused if I was a child. Isn't Sturgill precisely the kind of father who'd tell his son to color outside the lines? It's a little hard to tell whether Simpson's sober advice to stay in school and stay off the hard stuff is entirely sincere.

But of course, ambiguity is frequently where art resides. And anyone yearning for some of the hard-core country rock you get when you go to hear Simpson in concert will be rewarded with a song such as "Sea Stories."

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "SEA STORIES")

SIMPSON: (Singing) Keep your mouth shut and you'll be fine. Just another enlisted egg in the bowl for Uncle Sam's beater. When you get to Dam Neck, hear a voice in your head say my life's no longer mine. Have you running with some S-A-D, S-O-G, B-M-F sandeaters. Setting out on them high seas...

TUCKER: While I admired his independent spirit, I wasn't much of a fan of Simpson's previous album "Metamodern Sounds In Country Music," which struck me as too self-conscious, ostentatiously arty and too derivative - specifically, vocals whose phrasing and tone could be heard in Waylon Jennings albums from the 1970s. This is not, I'm pleased to observe, the Sturgill Simpson to be heard most of the time on "A Sailor's Guide To Earth."

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "BREAKERS ROAR")

SIMPSON: (Singing) Oh how the breakers roar, keep pulling me farther from shore. Thoughts turn to a love so kind just to keep me from losing my mind. So enticing, deep dark sea. It's so easy to drown in the dream. Oh, and everything...

TUCKER: That's "Breakers Roar," one of "Sailor's" many references to the sea. Simpson, who spent three years in the Navy, is drawn to water imagery throughout this album of birth and rebirth. It's the amniotic fluid in which his creativity floats. But there's very little that's lulling about the "Sailor's Guide To Earth." It's Sturgill Simpson's voyage into uncharted waters, whether he's talking about first-time parenthood or creating songs that venture into country music wilderness territory.

GROSS: Ken Tucker is critic-at-large for Yahoo TV. He reviewed Sturgill Simpson's new album "A Sailor's Guide To Earth."

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