Grounding Tom Hanks

By Rebecca Winters

Think your layover was rough? TOM HANKS has been stuck at the airport since October. In The Terminal, a Steven Spielberg movie due out next summer, Hanks plays a traveler who is stranded at J.F.K. when a coup in his home country renders his passport worthless. At the airport, Hanks' character "is able to experience both the bounty and the falsehood of America," the actor says. The set is a 75,000-sq.-ft. terminal constructed inside a hangar in Palmdale, Calif. "There's a lot of very tasty restaurants in the food-court area," Hanks says. "Have you had Auntie Anne's pretzels yet? They're pretty good." That proves it: even airport food is better than airline food.