British postcard by Heroes Publishing Ltd., London, no. SPC 2722.
Vintage photo. Tom Hanks in Apollo 13 (Ron Howard, 1995).
West German collectors card by Bravo.
A surprise box office success
Thomas Jeffrey Hanks was born in 1956 in Concord, California, to Janet Marylyn (Frager), a hospital worker, and Amos Mefford Hanks, an itinerant cook. Tom grew up in what he has called a "fractured" family. He moved around a great deal after his parents' divorce, living with a succession of step-families.
He had no acting experience in college and credits the fact that he could not get cast in a college play with actually starting his career. He went downtown, and auditioned for a community theatre play, was invited by the director of that play to go to Cleveland, where his acting career started.
He made his film debut in the Horror film He Knows You're Alone (Armand Mastroianni, 1980) and played guest roles in popular TV series such as The Love Boat (1980), Taxi (1982) and Happy Days (1982).
Ron Howard was working on Splash (Ron Howard, 1984), a fantasy-comedy about a mermaid, played by Darryl Hannah, who falls in love with a business executive. Howard considered Hanks for the role of the main character's wisecracking brother, which eventually went to John Candy. Instead, Hanks landed the lead role and the film went on to become a surprise box office success, grossing more than $69 million.
After several flops and moderate success with the comedy Dragnet (Tom Mankiewicz, 1987), Hanks' stature in the film industry rose. The broad success with the fantasy-comedy Big! (Penny Marshall, 1988) established him as a major Hollywood talent, both as a box office draw and within the film industry as an actor. For his performance in the film, Hanks earned his first Academy Award nomination as Best Actor.
Vintage postcard. Dan Aykroyd and Alexandra Paul in Dragnet (Tom Mankiewicz, 1987) with Tom Hanks. Caption: Who? Who... dares to wrestle with a central Bolivian giant anaconda to win the love of the pristine virgin Connie Swail!!? Find out in the action comedy film 'Dragnet' coming to your town soon.
French postcard by Editions Avant Garde, no. P550. Photo/poster: 20th Century Fox. Tom Hanks in Big (Penny Marshall, 1988). Caption: Have you ever had a really big secret? Big - A Wonderful new comedy.
Hanks's modern era of movie making
Tom Hanks climbed the top again with his portrayal of a washed-up baseball legend turned manager in A League of Their Own (Penny Marshall, 1992). Hanks stated that his acting in earlier roles was not great but that he subsequently improved. In an interview with Vanity Fair, Hanks noted his "modern era of movie making ... because enough self-discovery has gone on ... My work has become less pretentiously fake and over the top".
This "modern era" began for Hanks, first with Sleepless in Seattle (Nora Ephron, 1993) opposite Meg Ryan and then with Philadelphia (Jonathan Demme, 1993) with Denzel Washington and Antonio Banderas. The former was a blockbuster success about a widower who finds true love over the radio airwaves. Richard Schickel of Time magazine called his performance "charming", and most critics agreed that Hanks' portrayal ensured him a place among the premier romantic-comedy stars of his generation. In Philadelphia, he played a gay lawyer with AIDS who sued his firm for discrimination. Hanks lost 35 pounds and thinned his hair to appear sickly for the role. Hanks won the 1993 Academy Award for Best Actor for his role in Philadelphia. During his acceptance speech, he revealed that his high school drama teacher Rawley Farnsworth and former classmate John Gilkerson, two people with whom he was close, were gay.
He followed Philadelphia with the blockbuster Forrest Gump (Robert Zemeckis, 1994) which grossed a worldwide total of over $600 million at the box office. Hanks remarked: "When I read the script for Gump, I saw it as one of those kind of grand, hopeful movies that the audience can go to and feel ... some hope for their lot and their position in life ... I got that from the movies a hundred million times when I was a kid. I still do." Hanks won his second Best Actor Academy Award for his role in Forrest Gump, becoming only the second actor to have accomplished the feat of winning consecutive Best Actor Oscars.
Hanks' next role was astronaut and commander Jim Lovell, in the docudrama Apollo 13 (Ron Howard, 1995). Critics generally applauded the film and the performances of the entire cast, which included actors Kevin Bacon, Bill Paxton, Gary Sinise, Ed Harris, and Kathleen Quinlan. The movie also earned nine Academy Award nominations, winning two. Later that year, Hanks starred in Disney/Pixar's computer-animated film Toy Story (John Lasseter, 1995), as the voice of Sheriff Woody.
Together with producer Gary Goetzman, he founded the production company Playtone, with which he has been producing films ever since. In the first Playtone production, the musical comedy That Thing You Do! (Tom Hanks, 1996), he made his directing debut and played the role of a music producer of a 1960s pop group. Hanks starred with Matt Damon in the war film Saving Private Ryan (Steven Spielberg, 1998). The film was awarded five Oscars and was very well received. In the IMDb Top 250 in November 2023, the film has a score of 8.6 out of 10, making it the 24th highest-rated film ever made. After Saving Private Ryan, Spielberg and Hanks began producing the mini-series Band of Brothers (2001) about the fortunes of a group of paratroopers during World War II.
American postcard by Fotofolio, NY, NY, no HR69. Photo: Herb Ritts. Caption: Tom Hanks, Hollywood, 1988. From the book 'Notorious'.
American postcard by Fotofolio, no. Z 1047. Photo: Mark Seliger. Caption: Tom Hanks, Los Angeles, 1994.
Taking on physical hardships
Tom Hanks continued to play leading roles in numerous successful cinema productions in which he played the lead role, including Cast Away (Robert Zemeckis, 2000) Road to Perdition (Sam Mendes, 2002) with Paul Newman, The Ladykillers (Joel and Ethan Coen, 2004) and The Da Vinci Code (Ron Howard, 2006).
To be able to portray his roles as believably as possible, Hanks also took on physical hardships. For Cast Away, he had to gain and lose a lot of weight in a relatively short space of time to play the role of a shipwrecked man credibly. Filming was interrupted for several months after the scenes before the plane crash had been shot with him as the manager of FedEx with a still robust physique.
Together with his wife, Rita Wilson, he produced the comedy My Big Fat Greek Wedding (Joel Zwick, 2002). He also produced and wrote the television series From the Earth to the Moon (David Frankel, a.o., 1998). He also took on voice roles in animated films such as The Polar Express (Robert Zemeckis, 2004), Cars (John Lasseter, Joe Ranft, 2006), Toy Story 3 (Lee Unkrich, 2010) and Toy Story 4 (Josh Cooley, 2017).
Hanks made a brief and wordless appearance as a motorcyclist in the film Elvis Has Left the Building (Joel Zwick, 2004) and also appeared as Colonel Parker in the biopic Elvis (Baz Luhrmann, 2022). He continued to work with Steven Spielberg and starred in his films Catch Me If You Can (2002) with Leonardo DiCaprio, Terminal (2004), and The Post, (2017) with Meryl Streep. Tom Hanks has remained active in the film industry for more than four decades now.
Tom Hanks married twice. His first wife was Samantha Lewes from 1978 to 1987. They have two children, actor-director Colin Hanks (1977) and actress-producer Elizabeth Hanks (1982). In 1988, Tom Hanks married Rita Wilson and they have two children, actor Chet Hanks and cinematographer Truman Hanks. Tom and Truman appeared both as Otto in the tragicomedy A Man Called Otto (Marc Forster, 2022).
Italian promocard by The Cult Advertising, no. PC 6391. Image: Imagine / Columbia Pictures / Sony Pictures. Tom Hanks in The Da Vinci Code (Ron Howard, 2006). Caption: Tom Hanks is Langdon. 19 May 2006, the secret will be revealed.
Belgian postcard by MultiChoice Kaleidoscope. Photo: Isopress / Outline.
Sources: Pedro Borges (IMDb), Wikipedia and IMDb.
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