Tom Hanks to shoot Captain Phillips in Malta

Hanks will be staying at Palazzo Guarena in Qrendi... a residence that is no stranger to celebrity tenants, having also housed Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie last year, when Pitt was filming World War Z on the island.

Hanks is one of the most recognisable faces in Hollywood, as he has enjoyed a consistently successful career ever since his breakthrough performance in the 1988 body-swap comedy Big.

He has starred in Oscar favourites Philadelphia, Forrest Gump and Saving Private Ryan, as well as blockbuster hits like Cast Away, The Da Vinci Code and Catch Me If You Can. His voice-acting roles in the Toy Story and Cars franchises ­- a mainstay of the consistently successful Pixar studios ­- have also endearing him to younger audiences.

Speaking about his long career, Hanks is quoted as saying: "I've made over 20 movies, and 5 of them are good."

Captain Philips will be directed by British filmmaker Paul Greengrass, famous for The Bourne Supremacy, The Bourne Ultimatum and more recently, the political thriller The Green Zone.

Greengrass first made a name for himself with the 2002 feature Bloody Sunday, a gritty political drama on the 1972 shootings in Derry, Northern Ireland.

His signature 'hand-held camera' style, coupled with his predilection for tense political thrillers, make Greengrass an ideal fit for the upcoming Hanks feature, which will be an adaptation of Richard Philips's A Captain's Duty: Somali Pirates, Navy SEALS, and Dangerous Days at Sea, a dramatised account of his own experience as captain of the MV Maersk Alabama when it was hijacked by Somali pirates 2009.