Part way through our main course, I ask Tom Hanks why he’s here. No disrespect to the two-time Oscar-winning actor, who is as charming as his reputation suggests and loquacious to a fault, but he doesn’t need the publicity.
“I’m getting a free lunch,” he jokes, before acknowledging the demands of the “entertainment industrial complex”. Hanks remains optimistic that “despite the eight billion interviews I’ve done and the movies that I’ve made . . . the mystery can still remain in an audience [who think], ‘Yeah, wonder what he’s going to do this time?’”
Hanks has arrived at Soutine, which is styled like a fin-de-siècle Parisian brasserie, dressed in stealth-wealth black, exuding big energy that is not overpowering. It takes a moment to process his actual face, familiar from myriad roles over four decades (Saving Private Ryan, Forrest Gump, Apollo 13, the list is huge). His greying hair is closer-cropped than in his romcom days (Sleepless in Seattle, You’ve Got Mail), though not the bright white of this year’s grandfather role in Wes Anderson’s Asteroid City. He scoots across the leather banquette and leans into my recording device. “Hello. Hello. Hello. How are we? That works!”