Now, Hanks makes a startling departure in Sam Mendes' dark film Road to Perdition. He has taken on the part of Michael Sullivan, a hit man who struggles to find redemption and keep his young son (Tyler Hoechlin) from following in his footsteps.

Are ready to watch Tom pull the trigger? Since the Oscar buzz is already a-swirlin', we say yes. Here's what the actor has to say about seeking revenge, making amends and looking into Paul Newman's eyes.

People are calling this your darkest role. Are you getting a little tired of all the discussion about whether the audience will accept you playing a hit man? You walk into a movie theater with a preconceived idea of every star you're going to see on the screen, whether it's me, Liam Neeson, Ben Affleck...whoever. People know who I am, and I can't escape that no matter how hard I try. Hopefully, once you're in the theater, that recognition switch goes off, and you just watch the movie, and you're involved in what's going on.

Will you look for more roles like this? I don't have any desire to play a Bond villain or a serial killer, because, quite frankly, there's a ton of stuff like that out there. What's much more interesting to me is the rationale behind a character.

You might say Michael Sullivan is a loving father, even though he kills people. I disagree: This guy doesn't know how to be a loving father. You say he's a family man. Look at how they live. It's an oppressive atmosphere for his wife and kids. At dinner, nothing is said, because you can't even ask, "What did you do today?"

Yet in his mind's eye, Michael thinks, I take care of my wife; I take care of my kids; I honor my surrogate father--so I'm doing everything right. Then, in the wink of an eye, it all goes to hell. He's been living this frigging lie that has paid off in nothing but death.

So, I don't think I'm playing a warm and fuzzy assassin who's also a daddy.

What was it about this character you felt you needed to take on at this point in your life? I don't need to play anything. There's no medicinal quality to making movies. You just try to assess what the potential is. There's no science to it. In this case, for me, it was just an instantaneous reaction--I've never seen this before. On one hand, it's a genre movie, but actually, it's dealing with all this father and son stuff that has been around since the Egyptians.