Tom Hanks Space Case After Back-To-Back Oscars, Actor Shoots The Moon

A spring breeze drifts through an open window, carrying the fresh scent of lavender buds from the jacaranda trees. Somewhere in the distance, a tiny bird calls to its mate. Otherwise, it’s a fairly quiet day at Clavius Base, Tom Hanks’ “global headquarters.”

Until …

A burst of laughter.

A cascade of words.

“I think you’re out of your mind!” Hanks roars at the suggestion that he - two-time Oscar winner, Hollywood’s Nice Guy - is the Man of the Year.

No way!

“Val Kilmer - he’s the man of the year. You’re behind the times. I think he’s great,” Hanks says with sincerity about his fellow actor, the new Caped Crusader. “Was he not amazing?” he asks of Kilmer’s portrayal of Doc Holliday in “Tombstone.” He calls Kilmer’s turn “mesmerizing” - a word he later uses to describe Sean Penn in “Carlito’s Way.”

Few actors can rein in their egos long enough to lavish such praise on their peers. But Hanks is that rarity: a well-grounded star who isn’t too grand to marvel at another actor’s talent or make tea for a guest at his office.

The American public first met Hanks in 1980 with the TV sitcom “Bosom Buddies.” Since then, he’s evolved from cocky comedy bunny to compelling artist: the little boy-big man of “Big,” the ravaged lawyer of “Philadelphia,” the heroic naif of “Forrest Gump,” astronaut Jim Lovell in “Apollo 13.”

Hanks seems to have the platinum touch. He definitely has the golden touch, as witnessed by his back-toback Academy Awards and Golden Globes.

“He’s as well-known as any global leader and, minimally, as smart,” says Brian Grazer, a close friend and producer of “Apollo 13,” which opens Friday.

“He’s become not only film history, but real history,” Grazer says. “And he hasn’t changed. He’s still a guy who, if he wants to get some sandwiches at the beach, he gets them himself. He doesn’t send anyone else. And when he drives home after work, he just doesn’t believe that this is his life - not that he doesn’t deserve it.”

Hanks is relaxing in a comfortable chair in his office on the lot of Twentieth Century Fox, in a small, unassuming red brick building wedged behind two trailers. He has named his company Clavius Base, a place mentioned in the movie “2001: A Space Odyssey.” It’s an important film for Hanks, who since childhood has adored astronomy and space travel.

Like a big kid, he has to keep something in his Hanks, hands, something to play with, so he chooses a pen. He’s wearing a goatee these days, but it doesn’t mask that indescribably Hanksian grin, the one that explodes in merriment and squishes his eyes into tiny, frolicking slits.

He’s talking about “Apollo 13” and how much he loves movie-making.

“It was amazing,” he says of getting to experience zero gravity, raising his voice ever so slightly to punctuate the enthusiasm. “We were all looking at each other thinking, ‘Can you believe we get to do this?’ It was hard work, but filmmaking at its guerrilla best. … We weren’t questioning ourselves about the job. It was the greatest job in the world. Hey, I’d do it for nothing.”

His eyes stray to the telescope he keeps in his office, pointed toward a tree-shrouded window with a view of some telephone lines.

As ardent as Hanks is about astronomy, he’s downright rhapsodic about old manual typewriters, which he collects. About half a dozen sit on shelves framing a huge TV screen.

His love affair with the sturdy machinery began in the late 1970s when he was working in Cleveland with a theater company. His battered typewriter began acting up, so he took it to a repair shop.

“This old German guy looked at me and said, ‘Ach. There’s nothing I can do. This is a toy. This is not a machine. It’s plastic. It’s junk.’ Then he pointed to this Hermes 2000 made in Switzerland. He said, ‘Now, THIS is a machine.’ He had this manual typewriter I swear you could drop from a plane and still type on it.”

And though surfing occupies another place of honor (he had ventured out the day before and reported it was really good), Hanks swears he has no all-encompassing passions or desires.

“Ever since I became an actor, I’ve lived the same way. I have the kids who have to be looked after all the time, and when I’m not working, I’m on the lookout for inspiration and distraction.

“I have more responsibilities because of my position. … I try to exercise once a day, and then it’s, ‘What am I supposed to do now? Oh. I have to go to the dentist.”’ He opens his mouth and displays his new porcelain inlays.

Hanks is married to actress Rita Wilson, whom he met while both were filming “Volunteers,” a 1985 Peace Corps send-up. They have a 5-year-old son, Chester, and Hanks also has two children from his first marriage to actress-producer Samantha Lewes.

Because of his jumbled childhood, family is one of his biggest priorities.

Born Thomas J. Hanks on July 9, 1956, in Concord, Calif., his parents divorced when he was 5. Unable to support four children, his mother kept the youngest, an infant, while Tom and his older brother and sister went with their father.

How does a 5-year-old handle such separation?

“Ah, there was the beginning of the confusion,” Hanks says with a laugh before turning serious. “I don’t recall thinking that much of it. So much of it had to do with being an adventure. There was hurt later on.”

Whatever he may have felt, Hanks was able to mask his feelings as his father ferried the family around Northern California for his work in the restaurant business before settling in Oakland. Over the years, both parents remarried several times, and young Tom accumulated numerous stepbrothers and sisters, most of whom he never really knew.

None of this is a big deal to Hanks, who finds humor in those years of meandering relationships.

“My parents pioneered the marriage dissolution laws for the state of California. There really should be a whole wing on some justice building named after them,” he says, laughing.

So a Troubled Childhood is what makes Tom tick? Don’t count on it. He’s as well-adjusted as the next successful, sensitive artist. He credits his older brother and sister for dispensing values his way.

“We laughed. That’s what we did,” he says. “We laughed more than anything else and we didn’t need other people looking after us. … We were very self-sufficient and we were totally content.”

Hanks got through it all with his values intact and went on to Cal State-Sacramento, where he studied drama. But when he was offered an acting job with the Great Lakes Shakespeare Festival, a rotating repertory company, he dropped out of college.

A few years later found him in New York with a wife and child, and doing “Bosom Buddies,” cast with Peter Scolari as two friends who dress in drag to live in a females-only hotel.

He easily segued into film, making his feature debut in the 1981 slasher flick “He Knows You’re Alone.” Then, Ron Howard put him with Darryl Hannah in “Splash,” leading to a string of lame movies, such as “Bachelor Party” and “The Man With One Red Shoe.”

Early on, Hanks was self-conscious.

“And prone to just utilizing self-defense mechanisms that sort of got me jobs in the first place,” he says. “I was being funny or manic or approachable or nice because those were all ways of making myself feel better for being there in the first place and willing to do anything because many people weren’t and I was.”

But then came two of his most stunning, and stunningly different, performances - the acerbic and self-loathing Steven Gold in “Punchline” and lovable little Josh, the 12-year-old trapped in an adult body in “Big,” a sweet role that earned him his first Oscar nomination.

“I don’t think I was really in tune to what my actual, personal technique was until I made ‘Punchline,”’ Hanks says.

To get there, he had taken some hard knocks, such as a withering assessment from director Steven Stern during 1982’s made-for-TV “Mazes and Monsters.”

“I just said the words and thought that through the magic of movies that was it,” Hanks says. Then Stern said, “‘That’s fake. You’re not doing anything. Do it better.’ That was very shocking. That rattled my cage.”

Ron Howard also nailed Hanks during “Splash” when the actor appeared on the set one day knowing neither the production schedule nor his lines.

“It took longer to shoot than it should have, and when we were done with the scene, Ron said, ‘You know you should have been a little more prepared.’ … He didn’t yell at me. He probably knew that if he had yelled, I’d be paste for the rest of the day.

“He just let me know in no uncertain terms that I was starring in this movie and with that comes huge responsibilities, and one of them is to be ready to go. I’ve never forgotten that.”

Hanks has taken on a somber cast as he reflects on his career. He is fully animated when he talks, just the way he is on the screen - illustrated by the determined righteousness of a dying lawyer or Forrest’s unaffected grief.

In “Apollo 13,” it’s a look of utter sadness that makes us feel an astronaut’s disappointment he will not walk on the moon.

“He’s done a really good job of keeping things in perspective,” Ron Howard says of his star. “He’s still very dedicated to the idea of fulfilling each scene’s potential, putting in a good day’s work, being professional.

“His talent has clearly grown. He has more confidence in his ideas and also in his screen presence.”

Hanks has been chided for appearing in truly awful movies such as “Turner & Hooch.” But within the past five years, around the time he played the alcoholic coach in “A League of Their Own,” he obviously has become more comfortable with the decision-making process of his career.

The reason largely had to do with his marriage.

“I had another child and I finally felt I was part of an extended family that wasn’t going anywhere. The age thing really does come into play in a big way. By the time you’re 35, if you haven’t figured out things by then, maybe you should get some help,” says Hanks, who will be 39 in July.

“I had just settled down. … Rita’s family is very Old World and very inclusive and very tight. I kind of won the bonus as far as that goes.”

His eyes almost mist up when he talks about his wife.

“I think in the best ways that a man and a woman can complement and inspire each other. I think that’s what Rita and I have,” he says.

Hanks smiles and absorbs the late morning as a small breeze again rustles the jacaranda trees. He’s a man satisfied with his job, delighted that he’s a part of an extended, happy family.

“The images that you pull on and feelings that you draw on when you’re performing a role - they come out of our lives. … And certainly with a movie and a role like Forrest Gump, you’re dealing with family, you’re dealing with your progeny, and I think that if I’d not been married to the woman I’m married to, I don’t think I could have been as facile at translating my experiences into the realities the role called for.

“There’s a line in the movie where Forrest says, ‘I know what love is.’ I feel that way because I was taught what love is by my delightful choice of woman.”

ILLUSTRATION: Three Photos, Two Color