Tom Hanks and Ron Howard are perfect partners in crime in Inferno

The actor and director reunite for the latest Dan Brown adaptation, Inferno. The pair tell us what makes them such a great team.

Actor Tom Hanks, left, and director Ron Howard. Ernesto Ruscio / Getty Images

Tom Hanks and Ron Howard are on the viewing platform of the Forte di Belvedere in Florence, which is a major location in their latest film together, Inferno.

The pair have more the demeanour of a comedy double act than a director and his star publicising their latest big-screen effort.

This easy camaraderie is perhaps not surprising – Inferno is the fifth film they have worked on together, and their third based on author Dan Brown's Robert Langdon series of novels, after The Da Vinci Code (2006) and ­Angels & Demons (2009).

Howard has previously suggested that the reason Hanks fits so well into the role of Robert Langdon is because “in real life, he is Robert Langdon. Both are driven by curiosity, share a dry sense of humour, and are men who, when faced with a puzzle, are like a dog with a bone”.

When reminded of this, Hanks is quick to respond with his own dry take on former child star Howard’s own fictional TV and movie alter egos.

"The first time I met Ron, I was not meeting a filmmaker," he says. "I was meeting Opie Taylor [from TV sitcom The Andy Griffith Show], Richie Cunningham [from Happy Days] and that guy from [the George Lucas movie] American Graffiti.

“I grew up with this slightly older big brother, because this guy just took up hours and hours and hours on my television, and when I started doing movies, there he was – I was a fanboy.”

Hanks explains that their first meeting was not typical of such encounters.

“Usually when you meet ­directors they’re older, they wear a suit and they talk all high ­falutin’ and things,” he says. “But Ron was a guy who looked like my older brother, going: ‘What do you think of this? What do you think of that?’ I knew we’d work well together straight away.”

Their latest movie asks some fundamental questions about the effect the human race is having on the planet, suggesting that we have, in effect, a contagion that has infected the ­universe.

Despite their close friendship, Hanks and Howard have ­slightly differing perspectives on the film’s central message.

“As a species, when you start thinking about interplanetary travel, colonisation and so forth, you begin to wonder what will we carry to the next planet, and will that be constructive?” says Howard.

“Are we ourselves a virus? There are some good viruses in the world, too, but any organism that can transfer itself to another environment, adapt to that environment – I don’t know. Well, you just have to make the association.”

Hanks is a little less pessimistic and foreboding.

“Well I wouldn’t want to be in any press interview where I equate the human condition with being a virus,” he says.

“But we are complicated and we can have ideas that lead to behaviours that are very poisonous – but they can also be very conducive to our life experience, too. I guess we’re potential carriers of a lot of goodness and a lot of ­badness, too.”

Hanks does, however, acknowledge that overpopulation, which is the central theme driving the plot of the movie, is a serious issue.

“People under 35 are facing problems my generation can’t even begin to understand,” says the 60-year-old actor.

“When I was 20 years old, I moved to New York City. I had a wife and a kid at the time and if I saved all my money and spent frugally I could barely make – but I could make – my rent at the time on an apartment in Hell’s Kitchen, which was US$286 (Dh1,050) a month.

“The very same apartment today – and I happen to know this because I walked into it not so long ago – is $2,100 a month. How can anyone under the age of 35 afford that?

“The world is different and there are challenges and hardships that my generation can’t even understand.”

The movie flirts with a certain moral ambiguity as Langdon seeks to use his particular skills to solve clues leading to Ben Foster’s villain/hero who has resolved to take drastic action to destroy/save the world.

There is no such ambiguity when Hanks talks about his respect for Howard, with whom he also worked on Splash (1984) and Apollo 13 (1995).

“I’ve had an acting ­career spanning more than 40 years now, with varying levels of success,” says the Oscar-winner.

“If you’d told me at the age of 20 that I would have the experience of five times working with someone like Ron, who depends on me as much as he does and we’d grow together as we have, we’re always going to test each other’s boundaries – those blessings don’t happen too often and I just thank my lucky stars.”

Inferno is in cinemas now