Tom Hanks on Donald Trump: "America has been in worse places"

The actor supported Hillary Clinton in the US presidential election and once blasted Trump as "a self-involved gasbag".

But despite his distaste for the President-elect, Hanks has words of comfort.

"We are going to be all right," he announced at an event at the Museum of Modern Art in New York held to pay tribute to his career.

“America has been in worse places than we are at right now,” he said, according to Vulture.

"In my own lifetime, our streets were in chaos, our generations were fighting each other tooth and nail, and every dinner table ended up being as close to a fist fight as our families would allow.

"We have been in a place where we looked at our leaders and wondered, what the hell were they thinking of? We've had moments with administrations and politicians and leaders and Senators and governors where we asked ourselves, Are they lying to us? Or do they really believe in this?"

But the US star pointed to the US constitution ("a magnificent document") as America's safeguard against tyranny.

"That document is going to protect us, over and over again, whether or not our neighbours preserve and protect and defend it themselves," he explained.

"We are going to be all right, because we constantly get to tell the whole world who we are. We constantly get to define ourselves as Americans. We do have the greatest country in the world... We, who are a week into wondering what the hell just happened, will continue to move forward."