Berlin, Jan 24: Hollywood actor Tom Hanks flew to Berlin this week for lunch with east Germany's last communist ruler Egon Krenz, who is serving jail time for the state's shoot-to-kill policy against people who tried to flee to the west. The daily Berliner Morgenpost reported today that hanks, 46, invited Krenz to lunch in preparation for a film role as dean reed, a us country singer who lived in east Germany until his mysterious death in 1986. Krenz, 65, who was a close friend of reed, is serving his sentence in an open prison and is allowed out during the day. The academy award winner and the former hardline leader chatted for an hour-and-a-half in the wine cellar of the posh restaurant guy and talked about Krenz's memories of his friend, according to the report. Reed emigrated to east Germany for love in 1972. In 1986 he was found slumped in his car by a lake near Berlin with his throat slit.


East German authorities first described the incident as a tragic accident, then as the suicide of a heartbroken man.

The case has never been solved.



"Mr Krenz and Mr reed were good friends and that is why Mr Hanks wanted to speak with him about his life," Krenz's lawyer Robert Unger told the newspaper.

Bureau Report