In this interview conducted for the Herald, I speak to screen legends Clint Eastwood and Tom Hanks, and Aaron Eckhart is also in the room. Tom addresses fame and Clint touches on Superman, Transformers (“Erector Set-looking people”) and Justin Bieber. 

Under normal circumstances, Aaron Eckhart is a pretty big deal. A bona-fide Hollywood star. But sitting next to Hollywood legends Clint Eastwood and Tom Hanks, Eckhart is ever so slightly invisible. Ignored.

The men have come together in Los Angeles to discuss Sully, the new film about the “Miracle on the Hudson”—the 2009 incident where Captain Chelsea “Sully” Sullenberger safely landed a commercial passenger jet in New York’s Hudson River after birds destroyed the plane’s engines.

Eastwood is directing, Hanks plays the title character, and Eckhart, bless him, plays the co-pilot.

Eckhart will pipe up a couple of times over the next 45 minutes but mostly he seems resigned to being wholly upstaged by the superstars sitting to his right.