I'm a feminist, says Tom Hanks, as he joins Emma Watson's equality campaign

Emma Watson has signed up two-time Oscar winner Tom Hanks to her campaign for gender equality.

The Harry Potter star and UN Women goodwill ambassador interviewed Hanks in the latest edition of Esquire magazine, in which she co-edited a special section to promote her HeForShe campaign.

He told Watson he was a feminist, adding: “We have thousands of years of human history under our belts.

"If we are not continuously moving towards equal rights, equal opportunities and equal freedoms for every member of the human race — not just the half that is male — then we have squandered all we have learned.”

Hanks, who is appearing alongside Watson in an adaptation of Dave Eggers’s tech thriller The Circle, added: “There are more women in starring roles, writing and running shows, and in executive suites [in television]. The movies will catch up.”

He also predicted that “Canada will be run 50 per cent better than before” after the country’s president Justin Trudeau split his cabinet equally between men and women.

Watson, whose HeForShe campaign aims to change male perceptions of their role in gender equality, revealed she had been leered at, groped and scared by strangers who followed her.

She said: “I don’t talk about these experiences much, because ... I don’t want this to be about me, but most women I know have experienced it and worse. That is, unfortunately, how it is.”

Watson also joined criticism of the gaps in pay and opportunity for women in Hollywood, calling it “ridiculous” that only seven per cent of the top 250 grossing films in 2014 were directed by women.

She accepted that women who speak out face being labelled “feminazis” and “divas” but added: “It’s not goingto stop me from trying to do the right thing.”

Read the interview in Esquire’s April 2016 issue, on sale now and available as a digital edition.