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aYou just have to go into it and look for the surprises. You have to figure out the stuff you never heard before,a Tom Hanks said of his Walt Disney role in aSaving Mr. Banks.a (Disney)

Tom Hanks has made a career of delivering iconic performances in his films. And in

well, you don’t get much more iconic than Walt Disney.

In “Banks,” author P. L. Travers (Emma Thompson) reflects on her difficult childhood while meeting with filmmaker Disney (Hanks) during production for the adaptation of her novel, “Mary Poppins.”

Becoming Disney is no easy task, even for Hanks. There’s combing through hours of audio, film and video to help find the character. The right makeup helps. And, finally, you have to deliver something new to the audience.

“You just have to go into it and look for the surprises,” says Hanks. “You have to figure out the stuff you never heard before.”

In an

Hanks spoke about playing Disney in “Banks” and the effort that went into doing him justice.

Q: You're in two docudramas this year.

A:

Docudramas? Easy now … easy now. (Laughter.) That’s the stuff of bad cable channels. (More laughter.)

Q: OK, OK. But you're playing two real-life characters: First, Capt. Richard Phillips and now Walt Disney.

A:

Yeah, I gotta get out of this line of work. (Laughter.) I need to start playing fake people again. This responsibility is killing me.

Q: Is there a formula you follow to approach real-life characters?

A:

No. No. Everything’s going to be different. Other than the basic philosophy of trying to find a behavior that surprises you.

(This is) different because Walt’s dead. The research I could do was looking at old footage of Walt performing as

. Though I did hear a conversation where Walt says to his daughter, “Hey, get me a can of beer.”

Q: Was that video or audio?

A:

That was audio. That was just a very primitive tape where he was being interviewed for a book that a guy was going to write about him.

But (in the research), you can find out stuff about Walt’s dad (

, a Union Pacific railroad worker for part of his life) and brother,

.

You know, there was no Walt Disney without Roy Disney. Roy was the quiet, money man who made everything possible.

Q: Any little-known facts about Walt?

A:

Oh, yeah. The truth is, Walt Disney smoked three packs of cigarettes a day, and he died of lung cancer.

There was no way I was going to be able to smoke like Walt in every scene. But (“Mary Poppins” songwriter)

and others said you always knew when Walt was coming down the hallway because you’d hear him do this little cough. (So I use that.)

Walt didn’t want people to see him smoke. There are a lot of photographs of Walt showing people around the studio, Disneyland and job sites, and he’s pointing with two fingers. He actually had a cigarette in between the two fingers, but (if a picture was taken, the cigarette was removed from the print).

Q: Interesting detail!

A:

Yeah. So you find out stuff like that, and it’s a detail that adds to (the performance). And you look at pictures and my countenance doesn’t match up with Walt, but you can kind of get there with the right kind of hair and the right mustache.