The Second Coming of Hanks

In Untraceable, the young actor plays a very serious cyber-cop on the hunt for pedophiles. In real life, however, Colin Hanks has concerns of a less lofty nature: neverending SATs, pesky call-waiting, and playing it straight alongside his father's famous lover, a man named Antonio.

By Ariel Vered

In "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon," Colin Hanks is only one degree away from Oscar winner Tom Hanks (and stepmom Rita Wilson). And that makes coming up with questions not related to his famous family pretty much impossible. But, as you'll see, we tried.

Hanks's first film role was as 'Male Page' in That Thing You Do!, his father's directorial debut. Best known for playing opposite Jack Black in Orange County, he transitioned easily from acne-era roles (Get Over It, Whatever It Takes) to blockbusters (King Kong, again with his tenacious buddy) and independents (Alone With Her). His latest release, Untraceable, pairs him with Diane Lane as FBI cyber cops hunting down a serial killer. He's also in The Great Buck Howard, opening at Sundance this week, in which Tom Hanks plays his father.

The younger Hanks called from his local Starbucks to chat about playing Meg Ryan's kid, why kiddie porn isn't all that different from gross pizza, and what it's like to have the most famous dad on the planet.

BLACKBOOK: You live in the shadow of a really famous family member—your uncle, Jim Hanks. How you deal with that kind of pressure?

COLIN HANKS: You’d be surprised how many people actually comment about my uncle Jim. There are lots of stand-up comedians who have worked with him in the comedy clubs, so with that one, I just say, Oh you know Uncle Jim? Well then you must be a very funny man. Or woman.

BB: How about when people comment on your dad?

CH: I say, Well, thank you very much! I am curt. I am polite. I understand that people have a burning desire to comment on it, and so I say, Great, I’m glad you got that off your chest, and we move on.

BB: Your birth name is quite the mouthful: Colin Lewes Dillingham.

CH: My name inevitably ended up being Hanks, but they used my mother’s last name on the birth certificate. Once my parents ended up getting married, I ostensibly became a legal Hanks. No, I was a legal Hanks, anyway. There was a split second when someone had suggested, “Maybe you want to use Dillingham, you know, instead of that ‘other’ name.” But I said no, because then I’d have to answer questions about why I didn’t use that name. I’m actually very impressed with your research skills.

BB: Well, thank you. In Untraceable, you play a cyber-cop. Did your research consist of surfing the Internet?

CH: Greg [Gregory Hoblit, the film’s director], Diane [Lane], and I met with two FBI agents up in Portland where we filmed the movie. For lack of a better term, their job—and ours in the film—is to police the Internet, go undercover, collect evidence on pedophiles, and arrest them, along with anyone else who traffics illegal images or child pornography. What was sort of ironic was that the two FBI agents were very similar to our characters. One was a 30-year-old male, and the other was a female agent who was a bit older than that. So Diane went with her lady and I went with my guy, to get an idea of exactly what they do, and then also how they go about catching the bad guys. The stuff that they showed me was mind-numbing, truly disturbing stuff. At first, we were like, Okay, you’re an Internet cop. What does that mean? And they showed us. As disturbing as all the images were, I was really comforted to be sitting beside the guy whose job it was to catch criminals like that.

BB: What attracted you to this part?

CH: Initially, it was just because it was a fun read, a page-turner. By the time I’d gotten up to Portland, and met with the FBI agents, I got a lot more excited about the relationship between my character and Diane’s.

BB: What is the movie trying to tell us about Americans and voyeurism?

CH: I don’t really know. My job is to just say the words that are on the page, and not to mad-lib too much. If anything, it comments more generally on the curiosity of people. While I don’t think anyone would sit down and watch stuff like this on the Internet—although, it’s been proven, obviously, that there are people who would—I think that there are people who go to these sites out of curiosity and who, hopefully, are so disgusted by what they see that they click off the site. Just the fact that you clicked on that website means you’re counted. That, to me, is the more interesting part of the story—not that all these millions of people are sitting down with popcorn in front of their computers looking at these sites, but that they’re being counted when they do. At the same time, I don’t think it’s any different than the age-old “Oh my God, this pizza is disgusting! Here, taste it.”

BB: What is the most computer-techy thing about you?

CH: My biggest computer geek moment happened the day I spent downloading all the artwork from my albums so I could upload them onto my iTunes. I had amassed a huge library from all of my CD’s and didn’t have any artwork for when they came out with new iPod. That might be more of a statement of my ADD than anything else, but I spent all day looking for artwork. And I became obsessed with the clarity of the artwork.

BB: Your first role was as a male page in your dad’s directorial debut, That Thing You Do!. Do you have any aspirations to direct?

CH: I’m actually starting to work on a documentary that I’ll be directing, but I can’t really talk about it yet. We’re still very early along in the process. Hold on one sec. I just have one phone that keeps ringing. This might show you how un-technical I am. I hate call-waiting. I think it’s an absolutely atrocious invention, and I don’t have it on my home phone, but I have it on my cell phone and I wish to God I didn’t. Combine with that the fact that I can’t multitask to save my life, and you’ve got someone who can’t form sentences when stuff around him is beeping.

So, yeah, I’m working on a documentary about the fall of the music industry—changes in the music industry over the past 15 years. It’s not like directing a… uh…

BB: A feature?

CH: Yes, thank you. [Laughs.] I can’t even come up with the word.

BB: You’ve worked with Jack Black three times now. Are you guys the movie version of Justin Timberlake and Timbaland?

CH: Well, that all depends on who gets to be Justin Timberlake. By sheer fame, he’s definitely the Justin. But I would much rather be the sexy Justin to his Timbaland. That said, Timbaland is now very muscular.

BB: Do you like working with him?

CH: I do! I really enjoy just being in his company. He’s just a really sweet, funny guy. He was there when I was starting out—scared shitless—having to carry my own movie [Orange County]. And then I was there for him when he was carrying an even bigger movie [King Kong]. I was an insane Jack Black fan before I even met him, so the fact that he’s always been really nice to me and my family is really great. So often, when you meet someone you admire, that doesn’t happen.

BB: You’ve been in the filmmaking business for over a decade now. Do you still feel warm and fuzzy about it?

CH: No, not at all. [Laughs.] I don’t know if I was ever that warm and fuzzy about it to begin with, but now I know a lot more about it from personal experience—which is both good and bad. What always amazes me is that I’m still around. There are a lot of people who I remember from when I first started, and I don’t really see them anymore. I feel like I passed the first test, and that I’m now able to stick around. I’m sure that’ll happen every ten years. It’s like passing the SATs.

BB: I hope it’s more fun than the SATs.

CH: Yeah, me too. I didn’t do so well on the SATs. I’m really hoping it’s not a multiple choice test, or anything that actually involves sitting down and writing.

BB: Was there a specific role that inspired you to get into acting?

CH: No, for me it was like playing with toys. It was just fun. It was doing the school play, the Christmas pageant. It wasn’t until college, when I needed to figure out what I was going to do when I grew up. People were asking me, and I figured I’d need to give them an answer. And so, around that time, I was looking at all my interests, and things I’d done, and acting was the one thing I truly loved. I really didn’t want to do anything else. My dad always said, “You can do whatever you want, as long as you find something that you really love.” He said, “Look, as an actor, I think you can do it. But you need to ask yourself what you really want to do.” As soon as I answered that question, I was on my way.

BB: Along those lines, I wanted to talk to you about The Great Buck Howard. Your father also plays your dad in the movie, and he’s not so enthusiastic about your decision to become an illusionist. Is that a case of art imitating life?

CH: If anything, I think he wanted to forever capture on film him chastising me. Honestly, we didn’t have any conversations like those two in the movie. In fact, it was quite the opposite; he was always very supportive. If I was going to be happy acting, then that’s what he wanted me to do.

BB: What has been your most challenging role to date?

CH: Every new job, really. Each one is difficult, at least the night before. It’s the first day of freshman year over and over and over again. But it’s important to get out of your head, to do your homework, and essentially, not get fired.

BB: You did a really good job creeping me out in Alone With Her.

CH: Wow, you saw that?

BB: It was very chilling, actually, because you normally seem so genial.

CH: That’s a movie that I actually wish had had a bigger release. I was trying to make the most jovial guy really, really creepy. Not sure if I quite got it, because not too many people saw it, but hopefully it’ll have a nice cult following. There’s something about thrillers and voyeurism. I really have to stop making movies about watching people.

BB: In My Mom’s New Boyfriend, you play Meg Ryan’s son. Wasn’t this pairing sort of inevitable given that your dad plays her boyfriend in, like, every romantic comedy ever made?

CH: It seems mighty convenient, doesn’t it? It also stars Antonio Banderas, who also has the distinction of playing my dad’s lover onscreen. So, I guess it’s a twofer.

BB: Who would you like to be your Meg Ryan?

CH: I can’t think of anyone off the top of my head. As long as she’s as funny as Meg is, that’s all that really matters. It’s really a lightning-in-a-bottle kind of thing—you have to catch it when it hits. And sometimes it doesn’t, as Joe Versus the Volcano really points out.