An accomplished actor who often plays villains, Stanley Tucci also makes his own films. He talks to Ian Kilroy about working with Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks

To Stanley Tucci, Steven Spielberg is just Steven and Jennifer Lopez is just Jennifer. He drops his acquaintances' names lightly: Tom just happens to be Tom Hanks; Woody, well, that's Woody Allen to you and me.

Sitting over his croissant-and-coffee breakfast during this summer's Galway Film Fleadh, Tucci was animated and excited - about the new Spielberg movie he's in, about Galway, about Fahrenheit 9/11. "It was pretty profound. It was even better than I expected," he enthused.

Because he plays an officious security manger at JFK airport in Spielberg's The Terminal, Tucci is fired up about Michael Moore's film.

"We couldn't shoot The Terminal in JFK - you can't shoot in US airports any more," he says. "I mean, you can't even fly out of US airports any more, unless of course you're the bin Laden family." It's clear which particular political foot Tucci kicks with.

Speaking about his alma mater SUNY-Purchase, the New York drama school where he honed his trade, he says: "It was set up in the 1960s when people in America sort of cared for a while about the arts, when they thought they might be important for society. We know this is not the case any longer." Tucci is a little touchy when it comes to the policies of George W. Bush.

"Left of centre" is a fair way to describe the man and his movies, the ones he has penned and directed at least.

Two of those films were screened in Galway this year: the wonderful Big Night, about two Italian brothers trying to make it in the restaurant business in their newly-adopted country (the US), and Joe Gould's Secret, a barely-distributed arthouse film about an eccentric writer in New York and his relationship with a writer at the New Yorker.

To most, however, Tucci is the accomplished supporting actor in movies such as The Pelican Brief, Road to Perdition and Maid in Manhattan. Despite his arty, leftie leanings, this 43-year-old second generation Italian-American has done his fair share of Hollywood.

The Terminal, for example, is pure big budget stuff. It tells the story of an eastern European man (Tom Hanks) caught in a legal limbo. Unable to leave the US or enter it, he is forced to live in JFK Airport.

Tucci gives some indication of the budget involved: "Spielberg has so much cash at his disposal. I mean, that set of JFK, it cost like $12 million, the set alone. It was incredible - sort of JFK reproduced in L.A."

To add to his substantial CV of playing villains (a Middle Eastern terrorist in The Pelican Brief, Nazi Adolf Eichman in HBO's Conspiracy), Tucci plays Frank Dixon in The Terminal - a bureaucratic security manager with little human sympathy for the predicament of Tom Hanks's character.

Yet, as Tucci says, he always tries to portray even his villains with a little sympathy, or at least with a little understanding and complexity.

"Even Eichman, you can't play him as a monster; you have to play him as a man, because that's what he was - that's the really scary thing. The guy in The Terminal is hardly in the scale of Eichman, but he is a bureaucrat who is frustrated with his position and situation. And because he has a flaw in his character it forces him to take out his frustrations on this poor fella played by Tom Hanks."

As for Hanks, he says, "not only is he enormously popular, but he's a really good actor as well".

Of Spielberg, he paints a picture of a big kid with as much money as childish enthusiasm, a manchild with enough resources and know-how to dream anything into existence.

"Spielberg is really amazing to be directed by," Tucci says. "He's so facile. Were it not for the fact that he knows more about cinema than anyone else walking around, you'd think it was his first movie, he's so excited.

"He's also endlessly imaginative, almost to a fault. He just can't stop inventing things. He has everything accessible to him. He'll ask for something that hasn't been invented yet, and just say: 'go invent it'."

Woody Allen, whom Tucci has also worked with (in Deconstructing Harry), couldn't be more different, he says.

"You couldn't get two more different directors. Woody doesn't like to move the camera about too much. And he doesn't seem very excited about making the movie. The only thing that they really have in common is that they're both brilliant directors - that and they work short days."

Maybe both are less demanding than the great Stanley Kubrick, whom Tucci plays in the forthcoming HBO movie The Life and Death of Peter Sellers. Tucci is eager to play down the role: "It's literally only 10 lines, it's only a cameo."

Yet Tucci seems to have done quite extensive research for this "cameo", having spoken to people who knew Kubrick, those who liked him as well as those who loathed him. "I also read a lot about him, watched all the movies and listened to audio tape of him, as well as watching video of him," he says.

With his slim frame and smooth, hairless head, Tucci looks nothing like the bearded balloon that Kubrick became in the later stages of his life. But then again, it's the young Kubrick he's playing - "He was still heavier than me, even when he was younger."

Was Kubrick an interesting character to portray, given that Tucci is an accomplished director himself?

At this question, Tucci appears fatigued, a symptom of his disenchantment, it turns out.

"I haven't directed in four or five years," he says.

"I was very disappointed with the distribution of Joe Gould's Secret - the company that made it was bought up, then the film was dumped by the new company that came in. But when people see it, on DVD or video, they usually love it. I just lost interest after that.

"I got kind of sad about making movies. I just wanted to act in other people's films."

Which is a shame, because Joe Gould's Secret is a decent piece of film-making, and was well received at Sundance when it was screened there. Unfortunately, it just happened to fall in to that category where many less mainstream movies end their days: accomplished but unseen.

But after reflection, Tucci decides, "now I'm ready to direct again".

And, as it turns out, he has a script in the pipeline, based on the life of the 20th- century Swiss sculptor Alberto Giacometti (1901-1966), a man he describes as "arguably one of the greatest sculptors of the last century".

From the little he says about it, the film appears to be about the artistic life of the man, on its difficulty and the struggle involved in creation.

Whether the script ever sees the light of day or not, it certainly seems to be a million miles away from his lighter commercial roles, in films such as Maid in Manhattan, or the forthcoming ballroom dancing movie, Shall We Dance?, where he co-stars again with Jennifer Lopez, alongside Richard Gere.

Or should I say "Jenny" and "Dick"? No. I think I'll leave that to Stanley. Considering he has over 50 pictures to his credit, it's not all that surprising that he is on first-name terms with almost everyone in the business.

The Terminal opens on Friday