Tom Hanks has never been offered a "good" villain role.

Tom Hanks

Tom Hanks

The 60-year-old actor has starred in an abundance of films where he's primarily portrayed heart-warming and often 'goofball' characters but would like to try his hand at a villainous role.

He said: "The villains they offer me are the ones that say things like, 'Before I kill you, Mr Bond, perhaps you'd like a tour of our installation."

Instead, Hanks sees himself as 'the guy next door' and the 'new Jimmy Stewart'.

He added: "I've got a squeaky voice and big nose, so I guess that makes me qualified."

Hanks stars as Dr Robert Langdon in 'Inferno' - the third film in the Dan Brown series - and is tasked with fending off a villain who plans to wipe out half of the planet's population with the push of a button.

Hanks really enjoyed reprising his role as Dr Langdon, insisting he would have to "be a dope" to say no.

He added: "Come down to Florence? Shoot some film and eat great food? For a month? I'd have to be a dope to walk away from that."

And although he feels his latest film is balanced when it comes to the ratio of male to female stars, he thinks TV is more diverse now.

He told Times 2: "The truth is if you look at the state of television right now it is kicking the movies' butt when it comes to any kind of diversity. In television the spread of roles, between gender and ethnicity, is beautifully crazily diverse.

"The canard with movies is that there is a box office thing to deal with, which gets you in to cultural aspects of worldwide box office performance. Although in our movie there's a pretty good 50:50 share between men and women."


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