Tom Hanks, Robin Wright on getting older: 'I don't have a lot of time left to do what I want to do'

Together, Tom Hanks and Robin Wright made 1994’s Oscar-winning Forrest Gump.

Three decades later, the Hollywood stars have reunited, along with Gump director Robert Zemeckis, to make the film Here, a mellow meditation on the passage of time.

They play couple Richard and Margaret over several decades, with artificial intelligence used to de-age them digitally in some scenes.

How did the big reunion go for you two and Robert Zemeckis?

TOM HANKS: Honestly, it was like the years had never passed, and yet we took a few minutes to note that 30 years had gone by since we’d done it! Robin has worked with Bob many times. I’ve worked with Bob many times. I hang out with Robin regularly. We seek each other out just to talk about life in general, and we’re good friends.

ROBIN WRIGHT: I loved every minute of working on Gump. I loved the story, and just loved working with Bob and Tom. We have so much fun together. It feels like we’ve always spoken the same language when it comes to film. We’re always in the same lane.

Did Here make you reflect on life?

TOM: I’m 68 years old, and I’m on what they call the back nine. I don’t have a lot of time left to run up and down the field and do what I want to do. I’m not afraid of the fact that it’s running out, but I am very, very, very much aware that this thing does not go on for ever.

ROBIN: What you relate to is what we all experience, which is: everything passes. The only constant in life is change. Always.

Does passing time weigh on you?

TOM: I wake up in the morning at about 6am because I know the day is only 24 hours long. And still when I go to bed at night, I think, "I’m not sure I got everything done. I’m not sure I said everything I wanted to say today. Did I read enough? Did I create enough? Did I share enough with the people that I love?"

If you could give your younger self advice, what would it be?

ROBIN: What everybody probably says: love yourself, don’t fret and have more confidence – but you can’t, because that’s not who you are when you’re young. You don’t know that until you get older. I wish I had worn more miniskirts when I had good legs!

Here uses AI to make you look younger in some scenes. How did it work?

ROBIN: They basically trawl the internet and get interviews that we did when we were 19, 20, 21 years of age. They literally take that data and put it into your face.

TOM: We knew that this supercomputer was going to do all the work of six months of postproduction in a nanosecond. So we shot the scenes at Pinewood and we could look at them immediately.

Was it hard to act younger for those scenes?

TOM: It’s amazing how both of us became very technical right off the bat – I need to have better posture; you have to get off the couch a little bit faster than you did; we both have eyes that know too much. We had to figure out a way to remove that jaded-life quality!

ROBIN: We never could have emulated ourselves at 19 in our eyes. There’s no way. We have all this life experience now. But [the de-ageing] was a great tool so that we didn’t have to cast somebody younger to play us.

Robin, you were in The Congress, in which actors are replaced by AI versions of themselves. Are you worried about where the technology’s heading?

ROBIN: It’s happening already. People are using AI without consent and creating actors saying things they never said. So this isn’t new. That’s the scary part.

On a lighter note… Tom, you played Walt Disney in Saving Mr Banks. Could you ever play your good friend Steven Spielberg?

TOM: That would be too weird! I think one filmmaker is all I’m going to get out of this chequered career!

How have you both maintained your longevity in Hollywood?

ROBIN: I think we have angels over our heads. We’re very blessed.

TOM: The only trick to it is making sure you’re intrigued by the thing that’s being examined, so you can throw yourself into it whole cloth. There’s a period of time in your career – and I certainly had it in mine – in which I was always searching for that thing that would expand my horizons somehow.

Did you ever consider an alternative career, if acting didn't work out?

ROBIN: I don’t think I ever thought about that. It’s not that I had a guarantee that I was going to be able to do this for a long time, but I never even considered it.

TOM: No! This is my job! I’m ridiculously fortunate… I can pay my rent. And that’s a big deal for an actor to realise, that you can make your nut.

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Here is released in UK cinemas on Friday 17th January 2024.

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