Hanks most trusted celebrity in Forbes poll

LOS ANGELES - Oscar-winning actor Tom Hanks is the most trusted celebrity in America according to a new survey published by business magazine Forbes.

Hanks, who has made a career out of playing heroic or heartwarming characters in movies such as "Forrest Gump" or "Apollo 13", came out on top of a list of 1,500 celebrities ranked by trustworthiness.

Television celebrity Rachael Ray came in second, while "Back to the Future" star Michael J. Fox polled third.

Talkshow diva Oprah Winfrey was fourth while James Earl Jones, the actor perhaps best known for supplying the voice of inter-galactic villain Darth Vader in the "Star Wars" movies, was fifth.

Other famous names to make the top 10 included Oscar-winners Denzel Washington, Morgan Freeman and Reese Witherspoon.

Ron Howard, who has directed Hanks in several movies including "The Da Vinci Code", also broke into the top 10.

No information on the celebrities regarded as the least trustworthy in the poll was immediately available.

Satoshi Kanazawa, an evolutionary psychologist at the London School of Economics, told Forbes the list indicated that the brain of modern man could not fully grasp the concept of mass media.

Instead, "our brain assumes that we are still living in the small hunter-gatherer bands we lived in more than 10,000 years ago," he told the magazine. "As a result, we assume any realistic images of human beings that we see repeatedly are real human beings.

"Our brain doesn't understand that these are actors playing roles on a drama or sitcoms, and we act as if they are trusted friends."