(Cover) - EN Showbiz - Tom Hanks says Julia Roberts looked better than "four cups of coffee and a hot breakfast" on the set of Larry Crowne.
The actor wrote, directed and appears in the movie, which is about a man who decides to steer his life in a new direction when he loses his job. Larry, played by Tom, enrols in college, where Julia's character Mercedes Tainot is his teacher.
The two stars got along brilliantly, with Tom particularly impressed with how much effort Julia made on set.
"If you go to college and Julia Roberts is your teacher you probably made a good decision. You wouldn't miss that," he said on British television show Lorraine. "Julia came in in the most gorgeous dresses and shoes. I said to her, I got news for you. If someone saw you walking into class at 8 o'clock in the morning, oh my God, it'd be better than four cups of coffee and a hot breakfast."
The movie means a lot to Tom as he has been working on it for years. He's proud of how involved he was in the release, although he knows people will laugh about the amount of input he had.
"I had delusions of grandeur," he joked. "I went nuts and said, Here's how we're gonna do this folks. I'm gonna write it, I'm gonna direct it, I'll be playing the star.' It just happened that way. We started working on it a long, long time ago and it became more and more personal."
Although Larry is in a desperate situation he doesn't let things get on top of him. That was important to Tom, as he didn't want the release to be "too depressing".
He was also keen not to buy into the usual story of a male mid-life crisis, explaining he found it more interesting for Larry to embrace his new situation.
"He chooses to fight cynicism. It's hard to wake up sometimes and be naturally optimistic because cynicism, particularly when fate has been cruel to you, is such an easy, luxurious thing to give yourself, to hate everything and everybody for as long as you can, maybe drink a little too much, smoke a little too much, watch the cable TV. But Larry does decide I have to do something, and he goes back to college," he explained. (C) Cover Media