Think of “Hollywood’s nicest guy”, and the name “Tom Hanks” almost always comes to mind.

Not only has the two-time Oscar-winner actor made playing nice guys throughout his career an art form, with films like Big, Sleepless In Seattle and Forrest Gump; he is a nice guy in real life.

Which is precisely why film-makers couldn’t find a better man to play the legendary Walt Disney in Saving Mr. Banks.

He may not look anything like Disney, but the fact that the 57-year-old Hanks always manages to nail his roles without breaking a sweat makes this casting a no-brainer. Everyone loves Walt Disney; and everyone loves Tom Hanks.

To prepare for the role, Hanks travelled to the Walt Disney Family Museum in San Francisco and spent an entire day there. “I heard every single piece of audio and saw every piece of film that was in the place,” recalled Hanks. “You just see Walt explaining how he did it and how he did it was (to be) hands-on every step of the way.

“It’s funny. He always said ‘we’, which I thought was great. The ‘we’ that he used was the inclusiveness of everything that he did. It went all the way from goofy cartoons in Kansas City to the theme parks that he had. He invented an art form that everybody can imitate but no one can better.”

Q: Did you see Mary Poppins as a kid?

A: I do remember seeing it as a little kid because Let’s Go Fly A Kite may have made me cry at the time - so I probably saw the second reissue of it when it came out because I do remember being knocked out by that Let’s Go Fly A Kite sequence. It seemed to be so happy. I watched it later on with my kids, too. I probably saw my favourite parts of Mary Poppins 800,000 times because the kids would put it in all the time.

Q: Tell us about Emma Thompson as P.L. Travers.

A: Emma is one of those “no maintenance” artists. Every time I’ve seen her, I ask myself how she does that - how does she make it look so easy? How does she just roll it off there? In the work that we did together, there was always something going on between us. There was always a secret that Pamela had that Disney himself did not see until literally the end. The emotion that Emma had was a woman who was about to break into tears over something she could not communicate and that she wasn’t going to communicate to this guy, whom, at the end of the day, she thought was not going to care about it. That’s just the quality of an actress who is forever, it seems, at the absolute top of her game. Emma is that. She is so far removed from the old English biddy who lives in the townhouse in London and yet her finger is on the absolute pulse of all the Englishness that goes on with that.

Q: What was it like being Walt Disney?

A: I don’t look anything like Walt Disney! I don’t sound like him! I can grow a mustache and part my hair; but the job at hand was to somehow capture all that whimsy that is in his eyes as well as all of the acumen that goes along with it as well. He is an institution without a doubt. I recall watching Walt Disney’s Wonderful World Of Color every Sunday night on as a kid — couldn’t wait to see it. The best shows were when Walt himself was on and he was going to tell you about this new project he had. When that was going on, the most delightful adult I knew was sharing with me his excitement about his plans. It made you want to go to Disneyland; it made you want to hang around with somebody like Walt Disney and he was the most benevolent grown up on the planet Earth as far as I was concern.

You can’t do an imitation of Walt Disney. There is a cadence to the way he sounds that comes from his enthusiasm for what is in his head. His head was so full of magnificent ideas that he could not help make everybody else excited about what those ideas were. That’s what I was going for. He had a pride and a joy about building that lot and what was coming out of it, because deep down inside I think he knew that it was all him. There is a tactile connection to every word that he says, that has to come out of release specifically, and that’s what I was going for. That’s what I view as being the great challenge - to have someone so connected to what they’re talking about.

Q: Walt was not just a storyteller; he had a technical side to him too. Can you talk about that?

A: Walt Disney’s ability to come up with something new, to stretch the art form, goes back to when he was working in a garage in Kansas City. He just did things that were brand-new. They figured out the ways to make animated films that were more life-like, like what he did with the multi-plane camera, among other things. He has the same sense of visionary accomplishment that any of the great ones had. You’ve got Spielberg, Edison, Orson Welles, you name it, and he brought that same huge level of innovation. I think he was the type of guy who said, “Anyone can do it that way ... let’s try to do something new.” You could see it; even before Mickey, he was doing stuff that was incredibly vibrant and brand-new. I think in a lot of ways, he was like Steve Jobs. He had a fascinating mind that never shut off and he was fabulously and actively engaged in whatever new thing was on the docket right up until he passed away.

Q: Did you become a fan of Walt Disney in the course of making this film?

A: Yes, because I discovered so much that is brand-new. Long ago I read a biography of Walt Disney that I thought was really fascinating. He was in it for the art, but it turned out to be an art that cost a lot of money; and he kept track in his head of every nickel and dime. But he never lost the enthusiasm for the process itself. One of the things that I thought was amazing - and the reasons that he did it - was, as soon as he got the money and he opened up what was officially Walt Disney Studios, he sent all of his animators to school. He literally started Cal Arts, which is a world-class institution that is all about art. He did it because he said that we have to learn how to capture motion. There is a way that a dress waves, there’s a way the wind blows, ripples across a pond or blows leaves down. He was willing to take the money and set up a school to achieve that. He was a visionary without compare.

Saving Mr Banks opens in cinemas tomorrow. Read the full interview online at http://tdy.sg/todaymovies??