Tom Hanks

Sun 18th Jan - 8:00PM

Romantic comedies; back to back Oscars for Philadelphia and Forrest Gump; gruelling films like Apollo 13, Saving Private Ryan. Hollywood's A-list nice guy reveals his motivation.

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Tom Hanks
born: 09-07-1956
birth place: Concord, California

There were a couple more films (Dragnet, Punchline) before Hanks made his breakthrough movie. 1988’s Big established Hanks as a star. The film saw Hanks play a kid who wishes he was a grown-up and has his wish fulfilled by a fair-ground fortune machine. His portrayal of a kid in a man’s body delighted audiences and the film grossed over $100 million at the box office. In 1988 Hanks married Rita Wilson, an actress he had met on Bosom Buddies.

Hanks followed up his first hit movie with what he now admits were some bad decisions. 1989’s Turner and Hooch was a mediocre film, as was The ‘Burbs (1989) and Joe Versus the Volcano (1990). Bonfire of the Vanities threatened to finish his career after it was rated as one of the biggest flops ever. Despite this, the year finished on a high note with the birth of son Chester.

Hanks played a baseball coach in A League of Their Own in 1992, the film marking the beginning of a juggernaut of hits for the actor. The romantic comedy Sleepless in Seattle with Meg Ryan was a massive hit and his turn as a gay lawyer with AIDS in the drama Philadelphia won him an Oscar for Best Actor.

Forrest Gump in 1994 saw Hanks play a simple-minded man who lurches heart-warmingly through American history and was a runaway success. Hanks won his second Best Actor Oscar, the first person to win consecutive awards for 55 years. The momentum continued into 1995, with Hanks voicing the character of Woody in the hit children’s movie Toy Story and then making another blockbuster as an astronaut in Ron Howard’s Apollo 13.

A brief respite to write and direct That Thing You Do was followed up by the romantic comedy You’ve Got Mail, again with Meg Ryan, and then the epic and critically-acclaimed war movie Saving Private Ryan. The Steven Spielberg film was yet another massive success for Hanks who was awarded a Distinguished Public Service Award, the highest award the Navy can offer a civilian. Spielberg won an Oscar for his direction. The pair reunited to recreate the film for television when they made the series Band of Brothers, which was another acclaimed success.

Next was The Green Mile, hit, Toy Story 2, hit, Cast Away, hit, Road to Perdition, a slight slip – it only made $180 million. Catch Me If You Can with Leonardo DiCaprio in 2002 was another return to box office success followed by The Terminal and The Polar Express in 2004. In 2006, Hanks starred in the adaptation of the massively popular novel The Da Vinci Code. Splash, in 1988, was considered a hit making $69 million to date. The Da Vinci Code has made $758 million in two years. The total revenue from his films exceeds $5 billion. It goes without saying that Hanks is a very rich man.

In 2007, Hanks played the role of Charlie Wilson, a charismatic and liberal Texas congressman, in Charlie Wilson's War. The movie tells the tale of how Wilson joins forces with his sometimes lover, Houston socialite and active anti-communist Joanne Herring (played by Julia Roberts) and CIA Operative Gust Avrakotos (played by Philip Seymour Hoffman), in the largest and most successful covert operation in history - the arming of the Afghan freedom fighters in their fight against the Soviet Union.

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