(applauding)
- Hi everybody, hi, hi.
Working hard tonight?
You gonna be okay?
All right, first of the
stations of the cross, guys.
Big, big month coming, coming your way.
Take your TheraFlu, don't get what I have.
I had two, half my
household had the other flu,
you know, that comes out both ways.
I got lucky, I just have a horrible cold.
All right, I'm gonna take four questions.
(laughing)
- [Anastasios] Mr. Hanks,
right over here, Anastasios.
- Number one!
(laughing)
- [Anastasios] Anastasios
from the Greek Reporter.
- Ah!
- [Anastasios] Congratulations.
- Thank you very much.
- [Anastasios] And thank you very much
for all the performances.
- Thank you.
I have questions about
my honorary Greek status.
Number one, do I have
to serve in the Army?
- [Anastasios] I want to
ask you how do you feel.
A few years ago, I asked you
how you feel being Greek,
married to your wife.
How do you feel being a citizen now?
- Well, as long as I don't
have to serve in the Army.
I'm no good anyway.
- [Anastasios] I don't think you do.
- I got bad knees and I'm an old man.
Do I have to pay taxes
or can I just pay cash
and avoid all that stuff?
(laughing)
- [Anastasios] I don't know about that.
- I'm just kidding.
It's a great honor.
I've been Hellenic now for the
better part of 32 years, and.
- [Anastasios] I want to ask
you how Greece has affected you
as an actor and if you have actually
taken inspiration from Greece.
- Greece is a haven.
My family goes to Greece,
I've been around the world.
I've been to the most
beautiful places in the world.
None of them tops Greece.
The land, the sky, the water,
it's good for the soul.
It's a healing place,
particularly if you get into
that fabulous, fabulous Greek schedule
of sleeping until noon,
staying up 'til three o'clock
in the morning, and arguing
in a taverna til three a.m.
That's, it's just the
best life one can have.
Thank you, thank you.
Question number two.
- [Reporter] Congratulations.
Just a short question.
- Wait a minute, we just
heard a groan from the hall.
What happened, do we know?
Yes, I'm sorry.
- [Reporter] So you've
played in so many movies.
Which one of them is your favorite?
- Well, that's impossible to say.
All of them were magical.
You have to separate out the
experience of making the movie
and the way it is taken
in by the marketplace.
They do not correlate.
I've made movies that were uncomfortable
and just fun enough and they've done well
and I've made movies that
I've loved every second of it
and they come out and the audience
seems to be perhaps confused by them.
I will say this though, however.
I have never, ever regretted
being part of an ensemble
or the adventure that a movie comes along.
I must say one of the great
things is you can always,
you can always say,
well they didn't get it
in the United States, but
man are we crushing it
in eastern Europe.
They love our movie in
eastern Europe, playing great,
so that's a good thing to know.
Question number three.
Yes.
- [Reporter] Who do you want to play next?
- Who do I want to play
next, or who are they?
See, this is an interesting thing.
I would like to play you next,
(laughing)
but unless someone comes to
me with that great thing,
unless you have a screenplay that is based
on you and your life, I don't know.
I am, the current plan,
and because I'm sick,
I'm about to leave to go to Australia,
good thoughts to Australia for
what's going on down there,
to work with Baz Luhrmann
and I will be playing,
if all goes according to
plan, Colonel Tom Parker
to Austin Butler's Elvis Presley,
and hopefully I will then
finally have an answer
to all your stupid questions about
why will I never play a bad guy.
I think I'm about to do that,
so that's who I'm playing next,
and we have time for one more question.
- [Stagehand] Last one, last question.
- [Chris] Right in the front,
Chris with GMA Philippines.
My question to you is you, Keanu Reeves,
there's a handful of
Hollywood actors and actresses
that everybody seems to love.
How do you weave through all these years
in a career in Hollywood,
not gotten many people pissed off at you,
and no scandals, all that stuff.
- Well, I don't know.
It's not an agenda,
there's no strategy to it.
I will just say this, and I
have worked briefly with Keanu.
He has a wonderful answer
to those questions,
what is it like being, how is it to be
so well-regarded, well-liked,
and he always says,
well it's preferable to the
alternative, which is true.
I'd rather be appreciated than loathed.
That's just me, but I would
say that years and years,
when I realized that being
an actor was a thing,
a job, a craft, a pursuit you could have,
I didn't think there was be anything
that could possibly be more fun than that.
I'm not in this for power,
although I have some.
(laughing)
I'm not in this for money,
although man am I rich.
(laughing)
I could go to Greece anytime I want to.
That's how comfortable I am,
but there is no substitute
for that great, incredible.
I will tell you this,
when I was in high school
and we would audition for
Shakespeare's Twelfth Night
or Tennessee Williams'
The Night of the Iguana,
we would, auditions
would be done on Friday
and the cast list would
be put up on Monday
and I could not sleep
for that entire weekend.
I still feel that way the weekend
before we start shooting something.
It's just the greatest and most exciting
and challenging job there is
outside of, of course, trying to keep up
this horrible facade of
being a delightful man
in front of all you correspondents,
so savage, so cynical.
No, I'm joking.
This is easy, all we
do is talk about movies
so it all works out fine.
Thanks for a lovely night everybody.
Thank you very much.
(whooshes)
