I miss Tom Hanks. Not the one you can find in Angels & Demons, a film on its way to something close to blockbuster status in no small part due to Hanks as a Harvard symbologist on the trail of a Vatican killer. And I don’t begrudge him Angels & Demons either, with a payday rumoured from $30 million to $50 million. Whether it’s funding some of his other creative dreams or just putting another wing on the house really is beside the point. Hanks has gotten to where he is on the merit system, so he deserves whatever freight Hollywood will pay.

But I do long for a different Tom Hanks. The actor in whose eyes you could see absolute wonder and joy in Big Love, absolute humanity and compassion in Forrest Gump, extraordinary pain and resolve in Philadelphia, loss and love in Sleepless in Seattle. Silly, heartbreaking, sentimental—all essential Hanks, all essentially alone.

Hanks has does some of his best work alone. Remember the shape of his performance in Cast Away. Hanks spent roughly a third of the movie’s 2 hours, 23 minutes alone on a tropical island, creating a symphony of silence.

Where is the hero we knew we could count on even before he made those movies? The Apollo 13 Hanks? The Saving Private Ryan Hanks? Even his ruthless hit man-father in Road to Perdition, one of the darkest characters Hanks has done, was played with such a steady hand that you trusted him to do the right thing when it mattered. How much do we believe in Hanks? He was No. 1 on Forbes’ list of most trusted celebrities in 2006, the last time the magazine checked, even beating out Oprah.

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