Thomas Jeffrey "Tom" Hanks (born July 9, 1956) is
an American
actor,
producer,
writer and
director. Hanks worked in television
and family-friendly comedies before achieving success as a dramatic
actor in several notable roles, including Andrew Beckett in
Philadelphia, the title
role in
Forrest Gump,
Commander
James A. Lovell in
Apollo
13, Captain John H. Miller in
Saving Private Ryan,
Sheriff Woody in
Pixar's
Toy Story, and Chuck
Noland in
Cast Away. Hanks won
consecutive
Best Actor
Academy Awards, in 1993 for
Philadelphia and in 1994 for
Forrest Gump. U.S. domestic
box office totals for his films exceed
$3.5 billion. He is the father of actor
Colin Hanks.
Early life
Hanks was
born in Concord
, California
. His father, Amos Mefford Hanks (born in
Glenn County,
California
on March 9, 1924 – died in Alameda,
California
on January 31, 1992), was a distant relative of
President Abraham Lincoln, through
Lincoln's mother, Nancy Hanks.
His
mother, Portuguese-American
Janet Marylyn Frager (born in Alameda County, California
on January 18, 1932), was a hospital worker; the
two divorced in 1960. The family's three oldest children,
Sandra, (now Sandra Hanks Benoiton, a
writer), Larry (now Lawrence M.
Hanks, Ph.D., an entomology
professor at the University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign
) and Tom went with their father, while the
youngest, Jim, now an actor and film
maker, remained with his mother in Red Bluff, California
. Afterwards, both parents remarried. The
first stepmother for Sandra, Larry, and Tom came to the marriage
with five children of her own. Hanks once told
Rolling Stone: "Everybody in my family
likes each other. But there were always about 50 people at the
house. I didn't exactly feel like an outsider, but I was sort of
outside it." That marriage ended in divorce after just two
years.
Amos Hanks became a single parent, working long hours and relying
on the children to fend for themselves often, an exercise in
self-reliance that served the siblings well. In school, Hanks was
unpopular with students and teachers alike, telling
Rolling
Stone magazine: "I was a geek, a spaz. I was horribly,
painfully, terribly shy. At the same time, I was the guy who'd yell
out funny captions during filmstrips. But I didn't get into
trouble. I was always a real good kid and pretty responsible."
In 1965,
Amos Hanks married Frances Wong, a San Francisco
native of Chinese
descent. Frances had three children, two of whom lived with
Tom during his
high school years.
Tom acted
in school plays, including South Pacific, while attending
Skyline High
School in Oakland,
California
.
Hanks
studied theater at Chabot
College
in Hayward, California
, and after two years, transferred to California
State University, Sacramento
. Hanks told
The New York Times: "Acting classes
looked like the best place for a guy who liked to make a lot of
noise and be rather flamboyant. I spent a lot of time going to
plays. I wouldn't take dates with me. I'd just drive to a theater,
buy myself a ticket, sit in the seat, and read the program, and
then get into the play completely. I spent a lot of time like that,
seeing
Bertolt Brecht,
Tennessee Williams,
Henrik Ibsen, and all that, and now look at me,
acting is my job. I wouldn't have it any other way."
It was
during his years' studying theater that Hanks met Vincent Dowling, head of the Great Lakes Theater Festival in
Cleveland
, Ohio
. At
Dowling's suggestion, Hanks became an intern at the Festival, which
stretched into a three-year experience that covered everything from
lighting to set design to stage management. Such a commitment
required that Hanks drop out of college, but with this under his
belt, a future in acting was in the cards. Hanks won the Cleveland
Critics Circle Award for Best Actor for his performance as
Proteus in Shakespeare's
The Two Gentlemen of
Verona, one of the few times he played a villain.
Early career
In 1979,
Hanks packed his bags for New York City
, where he made his film debut in the low-budget
slasher film He Knows You're
Alone and got a part in the television movie Mazes and Monsters. Early in
1979, Hanks was cast in the lead role of Callimaco in the
Riverside Shakespeare
Company's production of
Niccolò Machiavelli's
The Mandrake, directed by Daniel Southern.
This remains Hanks' only New York stage performance to date; as a
high profile
Off Off Broadway
showcase, the production helped Tom land an
agent, Joe Ohla with the J. Michael Bloom Agency. The next year
Hanks landed a lead role on the
ABC television pilot of
Bosom Buddies, playing the
role of Kip Wilson.
Hanks moved to Los
Angeles
, where he and Peter
Scolari played a pair of young advertising men forced to dress
as women so they could live in an inexpensive all-female
hotel. Hanks had previously partnered with Scolari in the
1970s game show
Make Me
Laugh.
Bosom Buddies ran for two seasons, and,
although the ratings were never strong, television critics gave the
program high marks. "The first day I saw him on the set,"
co-producer Ian Praiser told
Rolling
Stone, "I thought, 'Too bad he won't be in television for
long.' I knew he'd be a movie star in two years." But if Praiser
knew it, he was not able to convince Hanks. "The television show
had come out of nowhere," best friend Tom Lizzio told
Rolling
Stone. "Then out of nowhere it got canceled. He figured he'd
be back to pulling ropes and hanging lights in a theater."
Bosom Buddies and a guest appearance on a 1982 episode of
Happy Days ("A Case of Revenge,"
where he played a disgruntled former classmate of The
Fonz) prompted director
Ron
Howard to contact Hanks. Howard was working on
Splash (1984), a romantic comedy fantasy
about a
mermaid who falls in love with a
human. At first, Howard considered Hanks for the role of the main
character's wisecracking brother, a role that eventually went to
John Candy. Instead, Hanks got the lead
role and a career boost from
Splash, which went on to
become a box office hit, grossing more than US$69 million. He also
had a sizable hit with the sex comedy
Bachelor Party, also in
1984.
In 1983–84, Hanks made three guest appearances on
Family Ties as Elyse Keaton's alcoholic
brother, Ned Donnelly. Hanks also appears for a moment as an
uncredited extra in the movie
Real
Genius (1985), when the lead character, Mitch, bumps into
him in a crowd.
Period of hits and misses
With
Nothing in Common
(1986)—about a young man alienated from his parents who must
re-establish a relationship with his father, played by
Jackie Gleason—Hanks began to establish the
credentials of not only a comic actor but of someone who could
carry a serious role. "It changed my desires about working in
movies", Hanks told
Rolling Stone. "Part of it was the
nature of the material, what we were trying to say. But besides
that, it focused on people's relationships. The story was about a
guy and his father, unlike, say,
The
Money Pit (1986), where the story is really about a guy
and his house."
After
three more flops, Hanks succeeded with the fantasy Big (1988), both at the box office and
within the industry, establishing Hanks as a major Hollywood
talent (he was awarded a Golden Globe for this
movie). It was followed later that year by
Punchline, in which he and
Sally Field co-star as a pair of struggling
stand-up comedians. Hanks's
character, Steven Gold, a failing medical student trying to break
into stand-up, was somewhat edgy and complex, offering a glimpse of
the far more dramatic roles Hanks would master in films to come.
Hanks
then suffered a pile of box-office failures: The 'Burbs (1989), Joe Versus the Volcano (1990),
and The Bonfire
of the Vanities (1990), as a greedy Wall Street
type who gets enmeshed in a hit-and-run
accident. Only the 1989 movie
Turner and Hooch brought success for
Hanks during this time. In a 1993 issue of
Disney Adventures, Hanks said, "I saw
Turner and Hooch the other day in the SAC store and
couldn't help but be reminiscent. I cried like a baby." He did
admit to making a couple of "bum tickers," however, and blamed his
"...deductive reasoning and decision making skills."
Progression into dramatic roles
Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson at the 1989
Oscars
Hanks again climbed back to the top with his portrayal of an
unsuccessful
baseball manager in
A League of Their Own
(1992). Hanks admits that his acting in earlier roles was not great
and that he has improved. In an interview with
Vanity Fair, Hanks notes his
"modern era of moviemaking ... because enough self-discovery has
gone on.... My work has become less 'pretentiously fake and over
the top." This "modern era" welcomed in a spectacular 1993 for
Hanks, first with
Sleepless in
Seattle and then with
Philadelphia. The former was a
blockbuster success about a widower who finds true love (in the
character of
Meg Ryan) over the airwaves.
Richard Schickel of
Time
called his performance "charming", and most critics agreed that his
portrayal ensured him a place among the premiere romantic-comedy
stars of his generation, making him bankable.
In
Philadelphia, he played a
gay lawyer with
AIDS who
sues his firm for discrimination. Hanks lost thirty-five pounds and
thinned his hair in order to appear sickly for the role. In a
review for
People, Leah
Rozen stated "Above all, credit for
Philadelphia's success
belongs to Hanks, who makes sure that he plays a character, not a
saint. He is flat-out terrific, giving a deeply felt, carefully
nuanced performance that deserves an Oscar." 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. The revelation inspired the 1997 film
In & Out, starring
Kevin Kline as an English Literature teacher who
is outed by a former student in a similar way.
Hanks followed
Philadelphia with the 1994 summer hit
Forrest Gump, and stated:
"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. (
Spencer Tracy was the first, winning in
1937–38. Hanks and Tracy were the same age at the time they
received their Academy Awards: 37 for the first and 38 for the
second.)
Hanks's next project reunited him with
Ron
Howard in the 1995 movie
Apollo
13, in which he played astronaut and commander
James Lovell. 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. The same year, Hanks
starred in the animated blockbuster
Toy
Story as the voice of the toy
Sheriff Woody.
Directing, producing and acting
Hanks turned to directing with his 1996 movie
That Thing You Do! about a 1960s pop
group, also playing the role of a
music
producer. Hanks and producer Gary Goetzman went on to create
Playtone, a record and film production
company named for the record company in the film.
Hanks executive produced, co-wrote, and co-directed the
HBO docudrama
From the Earth to the
Moon. The twelve-part series chronicles the space program
from its inception, through the familiar flights of
Neil Armstrong and
Jim
Lovell, to the personal feelings surrounding the reality of
moon landings. The
Emmy Award-winning
project was, at US$68 million, one of the most expensive ventures
taken for television. Hanks' next project was no less
expensive.
For
Saving Private Ryan he
teamed up with Steven Spielberg to
make a film about D-Day, the landing at
Omaha
Beach
, and a quest through war-torn France
to bring
back a soldier who has a ticket home. It earned the praise
and respect of the film community, critics, and the general public;
it was labeled one of the finest war films ever made, earning
Spielberg his second
Academy Award for
direction and Hanks a Best Actor nomination. Later in 1998, Hanks
re-teamed with his
Sleepless in Seattle co-star
Meg Ryan for another romantic comedy,
You've Got Mail, a remake of 1940's
The Shop Around the
Corner, which starred
James Stewart and
Margaret Sullavan.
In 1999, Hanks starred in an adaptation of
Stephen King's novel
The Green Mile. He also returned
as the voice of Woody in
Toy Story
2. The following year he won a
Golden Globe for Best Actor and an Academy
nomination for his portrayal of a marooned
FedEx systems analyst in
Robert Zemeckis's
Cast Away. In 2001, Hanks helped direct and
produce the acclaimed HBO mini-series
Band of Brothers. He
also appeared in the September 11 television special
America: A Tribute to
Heroes and the documentary
Rescued From the
Closet.
Next he teamed up with
American Beauty director
Sam Mendes for the adaptation of
Max Allan Collins's and
Richard Piers Rayner's graphic novel
Road to Perdition, in
which he played an
anti-hero role as a
hitman on the run with his son. That same
year, Hanks collaborated with director Spielberg again, starring
opposite
Leonardo DiCaprio in the
hit crime comedy
Catch Me if You
Can, based on the true story of
Frank Abagnale, Jr. The same year, he
and wife
Rita Wilson produced the hit
movie
My Big Fat Greek
Wedding. In August 2007, he along with co-producers Rita
Wilson and
Gary Goetzman, and writer
and star
Nia Vardalos, initiated a
legal action against the production company Gold Circle Films for
their share of profits from the movie. At the age of 45, he became
the youngest ever recipient of the
American Film Institutes's Life
Achievement Award on June 12, 2002.
Hanks was absent from the screen in 2003; in 2004, he appeared in
three films: The
Coen Brothers'
The
Ladykillers, another Spielberg helmed film,
The Terminal, and
The Polar Express, a family
film from
Robert Zemeckis. In a
USA Weekend interview, Hanks
talked about how he chooses projects: "[Since]
A League of
Their Own, it can't be just another movie for me. It has to
get me going somehow.... There has to be some all-encompassing
desire or feeling about wanting to do that particular movie. I'd
like to assume that I'm willing to go down any avenue in order to
do it right". In August 2005, Hanks was voted in as vice president
of the
Academy of Motion
Picture Arts and Sciences.
Hanks next starred in the highly anticipated film
The Da Vinci Code, based on
the bestselling novel by
Dan Brown. The
film was released May 19, 2006 in the US and grossed over
US$750 million worldwide. In
Ken Burns's 2007 documentary
The War, Hanks did voice work,
reading excerpts from
World War II-era
columns by
Al McIntosh. In 2006, Hanks
topped a 1,500-strong list of 'most trusted celebrities' compiled
by
Forbes magazine. Hanks next
appeared in a cameo role as himself in
The Simpsons Movie, in which he
appears in an advertisement claiming that the US government has
lost its credibility and is hence buying some of his. He also makes
an appearance in the credits, stating that he wishes to be left
alone when he is out in public. Later in 2006, Hanks produced the
British film
Starter for
Ten, a comedy based on working class students attempting
to win
University Challenge.
In 2007,
Hanks starred in Mike Nichols' film
Charlie Wilson's War
(written by acclaimed screenwriter Aaron
Sorkin) in which he plays Democratic Texas
Congressman
Charles
Wilson. The film opened on December 21, 2007 and Hanks
received a
Golden Globe nomination for
his acting.
In a play on the expression "art imitating life", Hanks played an
on screen dad to a young man (Hanks' real-life son,
Colin Hanks) who chooses to follow in the
footsteps of a fading magician (
John
Malkovich) in 2008's
The
Great Buck Howard. Hanks' character was less than thrilled
about his son's career decision.
Hanks' next endeavor, released on May 15, 2009, was a film
adaptation of
Angels
& Demons,
Dan Brown's sequel
to
The Da Vinci
Code. Its April 11, 2007 announcement revealed that Hanks
would reprise his role as Robert Langdon, and that he would
reportedly receive the highest salary ever for an actor which is
between $30–35 million plus an estimated 10–15% percentage of the
movie's revenue. The following day he made his 10th appearance on
NBC's
Saturday Night Live doing an
impersonation of himself for the
Celebrity
Jeopardy sketch.
Hanks is producer of the
Spike Jonze
film
Where The Wild
Things Are, based on the children's book by
Maurice Sendak.
Top worldwide film grosses
Hanks is currently ranked the #1 box office star in the world with
over $3.521 billion total box office gross, an average of $100.6
million per film. He has been involved with nineteen films that
grossed over $100 million at the worldwide box office.
Personal life
Hanks was married to
Samantha Lewes
from 1978 to 1987. The couple had two children, son
Colin Hanks (also an actor) and daughter
Elizabeth Ann. In 1988, Hanks married actress
Rita Wilson. The two first met on the set of
Hanks's television show
Bosom
Buddies but later developed a romantic interest while
working on the film
Volunteers. They have two sons:
Chester, or "Chet" (who has a small part as a student who asks Dr.
Jones a question at the end of the college chase in
Indiana Jones
and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull), and Truman.
Politics
A proponent of
environmentalism,
Hanks is an investor in
electric
vehicles, and owns both a
Toyota RAV4
EV and the first production
AC
Propulsion eBox. He is on the waiting list for an
Aptera 2 Series.
Hanks gives money to many
Democratic politicians and
has been open about his support for
same-sex marriage, environmental causes
and alternative fuels (Hanks was a lessee of an
EV1 before it was recalled, as chronicled in the
documentary
Who Killed
the Electric Car?). Hanks made public his candidate choice
in the 2008 election when he uploaded a video to his
MySpace account in which he announced his
endorsement of
Barack Obama.
Hanks was extremely public with his opinion and opposition to
Proposition 8 that amended the
California constitution to define marriage as a union only between
a man and a woman. Hanks and those in opposition raised over
USD$44 million in contrast to
the supporters' $38 million, but Proposition 8 passed with 52% of
the vote.
Hanks went on to blame supporters of Proposition 8 as un-American
and attacked the
LDS (Mormon)
church members—major proponents of the bill—for their views on
marriage and their role in supporting the bill. About a week later,
Hanks apologized for the remark, saying that nothing is more
American than voting one's conscience, and that is what the
supporters of Proposition 8 did.
Other activities
Tom Hanks, 2004
A fan of
NASA
's manned space program, Hanks said that he
originally wanted to be an astronaut but "didn't have the
math." Hanks is a member of the
National Space Society, serving on
the
Board of Governors of the
nonprofit educational
space advocacy organization founded by Dr.
Wernher Von Braun and was the
producer of the
HBO miniseries
From the
Earth to the Moon about the
Apollo program to send astronauts to the
moon. In addition, Hanks co-wrote and co-produced
Magnificent
Desolation: Walking on the Moon 3D, an
IMAX film about the moon landings.
Hanks also provided
the voice over for the first new planetarium show following the opening of the
new Rose Center for Earth & Space in the Hayden Planetarium at
the American Museum of Natural
History
in New York.
In 2006, the
Space Foundation
awarded Hanks the Douglas S. Morrow Public Outreach Award. The
award is given annually to an individual or organization that has
made significant contributions to public awareness of space
programs.
In June 2006 Hanks was inducted as an honorary member of the
United States Army
Rangers Hall of Fame for his accurate portrayal of a
Captain in the movie
Saving Private Ryan; Hanks, who was
unable to attend the induction
ceremony,
was the first actor to receive such an honor. In addition to his
role in
Saving Private Ryan, Hanks was cited for serving
as the national
spokesperson for the
World War II Memorial Campaign, for being the honorary
chairperson of the D-Day Museum Capital
Campaign, and for his role in writing and helping to produce the
Emmy Award-winning miniseries,
Band of
Brothers.
Hanks was one of several celebrities who frequently participated in
planned comedy bits on
Late Night with Conan
O'Brien while a guest. On one visit, Hanks asked Conan to
join his run for president on the "Bad Haircut Party" ticket, with
confetti and balloons and a hand held sign with the slogan "You'd
be stupid to vote for us". On another, O'Brien, noting that Hanks
was missing Christmas on his promotional tour, brought the season
to him, including a gift (the skeleton of Hooch), and a mass of
snow burying them both. On yet another episode, Conan gave Hanks a
painting he had commissioned reflecting two of his interests:
Astronauts landing on the beach at
Normandy.
On March
10, 2008, Hanks was on hand at the Rock &
Roll Hall of Fame
to induct sixties sensation The Dave Clark Five. He praised
the group for both the joy of their music and for never signing
away their publishing rights.
Hanks is working on the next film in the Toy Story franchise,
Toy Story 3, reprising his role
as
Sheriff Woody, scheduled for
release in 2010. He reprised the voice of Woody after he,
Tim Allen, and
John
Ratzenberger were invited to a Movie theatre to see a complete
story reel of the movie.
Hanks is a known fan of
English Premier
League Football club Aston
Villa and was presented with a shirt on a TV show with the
print 'Hanks 1' on the back. Hanks confirmed his affiliation with
the club in an interview with
Jonathan
Ross in May 2009, citing his public like for the name as the
reason why the media portray him as an Aston Villa fan.
Filmography
Television
Other accolades
Eponym
Asteroid
12818 Tomhanks has been
named after him.
References
- People Index from Box Office Mojo
- Fenster, Bob. They Did What!? The Funny, Weird, Wonderful,
and Stupid Things Famous People Have Done, Andrews Publishing,
2002. Page 55.
- Lawrence M. Hanks, Associate Professor - University of
Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
- Winner Speeches
- "Hanks files big fat 'Greek' lawsuit" -
United Press International - (c/o
NewsDaily.com) - August 8, 2007
- "Hanks sues over unpaid 'My big fat Greek wedding'
profits", Irish Examiner, 8 August 2007.
- "Actor Hanks voted in by Academy", BBC, 25 August 2005.
- "Hanks tops 'most trusted' index", BBC, 27
September 2006.
- "A real Movie challenge". BBC. November 9,
2006.
- Tyler, Joshua. "Tom Hanks Confirmed For Da Vinci Code Sequel",
Cinema Blend, 10 April 2007.
- Fleming, Michael. "Howard
moves fast with 'Code' sequel", Variety, 24
October 2007.
- "Where the Wild Things Are". Box Office Mojo.
Accessed October 19, 2009.
- "People Index." Box Office Mojo.
- "Tom Hanks." Box Office Mojo.
- Tom Hanks, Us Magazine
- Tom Hanks, E!
Entertainment Television
- Tom Hanks on Letterman
- [1]
- "Hollywood Loves Hybrid Cars", Washington Post
(c/o AllAboutHyBridCars.com)
- Beware: Celebrity Endorsement par Tom Hanks
from Vidéos MySpaceTV
- California propositions: Proposition 8,
county-by-county map, margin of victory, Los Angeles
Times
- "Tom Hanks Get Payback for Prop 8" from
Lonsberry.com
- Tom Hanks Says Mormon Supporters of Proposition 8
'Un-American', Fox
News
- Tom Hanks Apologizes for Calling Mormon Supporters
of Proposition 8 'Un-American', Fox News
- http://www.nationalspacesymposium.org/symposium-awards
- "Army honors Tom Hanks", Associated Press
(c/o News24), 30 June
2006.
- Marshal J WMT KPIX KGO Kids Show Host Jay
Alexander
- Tom Hanks on Toy Story 3 from Firstshowing.net
- The Achievement of Tom Hanks from the AFI
website
- Minor Planet Names: Alphabetical List from the
Harvard-Smithsonian
Center for Astrophysics
Further reading
- Gardner, David, Tom Hanks: The Unauthorized Biography,
London, England 1999
- Gardner, David, Tom Hanks: Enigma 2007
- Pfeiffer, Lee, The Films of Tom Hanks, Secaucus, New
Jersey, 1996
- Salamon, Julie, The Devil's Candy: The Bonfire of the
Vanities Goes to Hollywood, Boston, 1991
- Trakin, Roy, Tom Hanks: Journey to Stardom, 1987; rev.
ed.1995
- Wallner, Rosemary, Tom Hanks: Academy Award-Winning
Actor, Edina, Minnesota, 1994
External links
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