Colin Hanks has become a fine actor in his own right.

SANTA MONICA, Calif. -- Colin Hanks' boy-next-door good looks and comic timing recall his famous father Tom, but the younger Hanks has quietly broken through as an actor on his own, almost entirely without dad's help.

His feature-movie roles include Orange County (2002), the 2005 blockbuster King Kong and a lesser-known but scary turn as voyeur-stalker in the 2006 indie-flick Alone With Her.

"It doesn't matter what kind of film it is, it doesn't matter the genre, I'm just trying to do good work because that's really the part that I love, just trying make my way up the ladder so to speak," Hanks said recently.

After roles on TV's Roswell and a guest spot on The O.C., Hanks also hasn't turned his back on the small screen.

"I would really love to be a part of Man Men, that show on AMC (about '60s ad executives) ... the attention to detail that they have both in the era and the characters," said Hanks, who lives in New York City with his girlfriend of almost two years.

"That show, to me, is probably one of the best shows on television," Hanks continued. "So yeah, I'd like to work on the best show on television but that doesn't necessarily mean it's going to happen."

For now, Hanks can be seen as an FBI cyber-crimes agent hunting an online serial killer in movie theatres in the new thriller, Untraceable.

Hanks doesn't see the movie as a cautionary tale so much as entertainment.

"I don't think it's meant to make any huge, grand statements or anything like that," he said. "It's supposed to be an entertaining movie. It's supposed to scare you a little bit. It's supposed to maybe make you cringe, a little."

Hanks, who shadowed real-life FBI cyber-crimes agents along with his co-star, Diane Lane, said he's hardly "an Internet geek," himself although 10 months of filming King Kong in New Zealand forced him to get more computer friendly.

"Prior to that I had always thought that the Internet was created for bored people at work," he joked. "I'm a little bit more saavy now."

Another Hanks project, The Great Buck Howard, had its premiere at Sundance last week. In the film, Hanks plays a law school dropout-turned-road manager for a has-been magician (John Malkovich) with Hanks Sr., who produced the movie, as his onscreen father in two scenes.

"He did okay," he joked of his father's acting. On working opposite Malkovich, however, Hanks was more effusive.

"He was a joy. He was great. He was so much fun and so funny and so pleasant and so interesting," he said. "I would be sitting there and all of the sudden you'd hear John Malkovich say (doing his best Malkovich impression), 'You know, I really think that I prefer the White Castle sliders (mini-burgers) to anything although In-And-Out makes a good hamburger. Those sliders, they're so easy to eat.' So John can talk about anything."

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