Tom Hanks

• 1. Introduction

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  Tom Hanks lost 35 pounds for a single role. He thinned his hair, learned to walk differently, and prepared to play a dying man on screen. The film was Philadelphia, released in 1993, and when it was over, Hanks stood at the Academy Award podium and named two people from his past who were gay: his high school drama teacher Rawley Farnsworth, and his former classmate John Gilkerson. It was a public act of recognition from someone who had just made history. He would win Best Actor again the following year, becoming only the second actor ever to win the award in consecutive years. The questions worth asking about Tom Hanks are not simply about awards. They are about how a shy, restless kid from Concord, California, who had lived in ten houses by age ten, became what critics called a vessel for ordinary American life. How did a man who spent three years as a theater intern in Cleveland become the fifth-highest all-time box office star in North America? And what does it say about audiences that his films have grossed over $9.96 billion worldwide?

• 2. A Childhood in Motion

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  Thomas Jeffrey Hanks was born on the 9th of July, 1956, in Concord, California, a suburb of San Francisco. His father, Amos "Bud" Hanks, was an itinerant cook, and that restlessness defined the family's early years. By the time Hanks was ten years old, he had already lived in ten different houses. His parents divorced in 1960, and the three oldest children went with their father, while the youngest, Jim, stayed with their mother in Red Bluff, California. Jim would also go on to become an actor and filmmaker.

  Hanks' family had a mixed religious background, Catholic and Mormon, and one journalist described his teenage self as a "Bible-toting evangelical" for several years. At Skyline High School in Oakland, California, he told Rolling Stone that he was "a geek, a spaz" who was "horribly, painfully, terribly shy" but also the student who would yell out funny captions during filmstrips. He acted in school plays, including South Pacific. Some of his earliest memories of movies came from watching films at the Alameda Theatre in the Bay Area.

  After high school, Hanks studied theater at Chabot College in Hayward, California. He transferred to California State University, Sacramento after two years. It was during those college years that he encountered Vincent Dowling, the head of the Great Lakes Theater Festival in Cleveland, Ohio. On Dowling's suggestion, Hanks became an intern at the festival. What was meant to be an internship stretched into a three-year experience covering lighting, set design, and stage management. It was enough to make him drop out of college entirely. During that period, he won the Cleveland Critics Circle Award for Best Actor for his 1978 performance as Proteus in Shakespeare's The Two Gentlemen of Verona, one of the rare occasions he played a villain.

• 3. The Road to Hollywood

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  In 1979, Hanks moved to New York City. His film debut came the following year in the low-budget slasher film He Knows You're Alone (1980). That same year, he landed a lead role on the ABC sitcom Bosom Buddies, playing Kip Wilson, one of two young advertising men who dress as women to live in an inexpensive all-female hotel. His co-star was Peter Scolari, with whom he had previously worked on the 1970s game show Make Me Laugh. The ratings on Bosom Buddies were never strong, but television critics praised the show. Ian Praiser, co-producer, told Rolling Stone that on the first day he saw Hanks on set, he thought: "Too bad he won't be in television for long. I knew he'd be a movie star in two years."

  That transition came through a chance guest appearance in 1982 on Happy Days, where Hanks met writers Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel. They were writing Splash (1984), a romantic comedy fantasy about a mermaid who falls in love with a human, to be directed by former Happy Days star Ron Howard. Howard initially considered Hanks for the wisecracking brother role, a part that eventually went to John Candy. Instead, Hanks landed the lead. Splash became a surprise box office hit, grossing more than US$69 million. A sex comedy called Bachelor Party, also in 1984, followed as another sizable success.

  With Nothing in Common (1986), co-starring Jackie Gleason, Hanks began moving from pure comedy toward dramatic territory. He told Rolling Stone the film "changed my desires about working in movies" because it focused on the relationship between a son and his father, rather than a character and a situation. Then came Big (1988), the fantasy comedy that established him as a major Hollywood talent and earned him his first Academy Award nomination for Best Actor. It was followed by Punchline, co-starring Sally Field. A run of box-office underperformers followed: The 'Burbs (1989), Joe Versus the Volcano (1990), and The Bonfire of the Vanities (1990). Turner & Hooch (1989) was the one financial success of that difficult stretch.

• 4. Consecutive Oscars

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  A League of Their Own (1992), directed by Penny Marshall, brought Hanks back to the top of Hollywood. He played a washed-up baseball legend turned manager. In an interview with Vanity Fair, Hanks spoke of what he called his "modern era of moviemaking," saying his work had become "less pretentiously fake and over the top." That modern era began in 1993 with two films that would define his place in cinema.

  Sleepless in Seattle paired him with Meg Ryan in a romantic comedy about a widower who finds love over the radio. Richard Schickel of TIME called his performance "charming," and most critics agreed it secured him among the premier romantic-comedy stars of his generation. Then came Philadelphia, directed by Jonathan Demme. Hanks played a gay lawyer with AIDS who sues his firm for discrimination. A reviewer in People wrote that Hanks made sure "he plays a character, not a saint," calling the performance "flat-out terrific" and deserving of an Oscar. He won.

  Hanks followed that with Robert Zemeckis's Forrest Gump (1994), playing a man with an IQ of 75 who keeps finding himself at the center of major American historical events. The film grossed a worldwide total of $678 million. Hanks remarked that when he read the script, he 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." He won his second consecutive Academy Award for Best Actor, becoming only the second actor to accomplish that feat. Spencer Tracy was the first, winning in 1937 and 1938 for Captains Courageous and Boys Town. Hanks and Tracy were also the same age when they received their respective Oscars: 37 when they won their first, 38 when they won their second.

• 5. Spielberg, Toy Story, and Television

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  Apollo 13 (1995), directed by Ron Howard, reunited Hanks with his Splash director to play astronaut and commander Jim Lovell. The film earned nine Academy Award nominations and won two. That same year, Hanks voiced Sheriff Woody in Pixar's Toy Story (1995), a role he would reprise across three more sequels, including Toy Story 4 (2019), which grossed $1.074 billion worldwide.

  Hanks made his directing debut with That Thing You Do! (1996), about a 1960s pop group, in which he also played a music producer. He and producer Gary Goetzman went on to found Playtone, a production company named after the fictional record label in the film. Playtone became the vehicle for some of Hanks's most ambitious television work. The HBO docudrama From the Earth to the Moon (1998), which Hanks executive produced, co-wrote, and co-directed, was a 12-part series chronicling the space program. At $68 million (equivalent to $133 million in 2025), it was among the most expensive ventures ever undertaken for television.

  His partnership with Steven Spielberg became one of the most sustained collaborations in modern Hollywood. They worked together on five films: Saving Private Ryan (1998), Catch Me If You Can (2002), The Terminal (2004), Bridge of Spies (2015), and The Post (2017). They also co-produced three World War II miniseries: Band of Brothers (2001), The Pacific (2010), and Masters of the Air (2024). Saving Private Ryan, about a search through war-torn France after D-Day to recover a single soldier, earned Spielberg his second Academy Award for direction and earned Hanks another Best Actor nomination. In June 2006, Hanks was inducted as an honorary member of the United States Army Rangers Hall of Fame, the first actor to receive such an honor, partly in recognition of that film.

• 6. Personal Life and Beliefs

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  Hanks married actress Samantha Lewes in 1978. They had two children, Colin (born 1977) and Elizabeth (born 1982), before divorcing in 1987. Lewes died in 2002 at the age of 49 from bone cancer.

  Hanks met actress Rita Wilson in 1981 on the set of Bosom Buddies, and they were reunited in 1985 on the set of Volunteers. Before marrying Wilson in 1988, Hanks converted to her Greek Orthodox faith. He has spoken openly about what he finds in church: "I must say that when I go to church and I do go to church I ponder the mystery. I meditate on the 'why?' of 'why people are as they are' and 'why bad things happen to good people.'" They have two sons together. Their younger son, Truman, born in 1995, played the younger version of his father's character in A Man Called Otto (2022).

  In October 2013, Hanks revealed on Late Show with David Letterman that he has type 2 diabetes. A CBS News medical contributor suggested that his significant weight fluctuations for film roles may have contributed to the diagnosis. On the 27th of December, 2019, the President of Greece signed an honorary naturalization order for Hanks and his family, citing their "exceptional services to Greece." The honor followed Hanks and Wilson's efforts to bring global attention and aid to a devastating wildfire that struck the seaside village of Mati, near Athens, in July 2018, killing more than 100 people. In November 2019, Hanks also discovered through Ancestry.com that he and Fred Rogers, whom he had portrayed in A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, were sixth cousins, both descended from Johannes Meffert, born in 1732 in Schöneck, Hesse, Germany.

• 7. Reputation and the Ordinary Hero

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  Roger Ebert placed Hanks in a rare category alongside Buster Keaton, Spencer Tracy, James Stewart, Henry Fonda, Robert Duvall, and Gene Hackman, describing actors who are "not bigger than life, but somehow just like life." He wrote that with Hanks, audiences feel they are "watching ourselves" and that in their ordinariness they also have "a kind of importance." Ebert went further, arguing that the camera is "a lie detector" and that Hanks must be "a fundamentally good person" to play such roles, or else "an even better actor than we think."

  Hanks has been referred to frequently as "America's Dad," a comparison often made to James Stewart. In 2006, he topped a 1,500-strong list of "most trusted celebrities" compiled by Forbes. In 2003, Channel 4 ranked him number three on a countdown of the 100 Greatest Movie Stars of All Time. His films have grossed over $9.96 billion worldwide. His North American gross stands above $4.9 billion, with an average of $100.8 million per film. Asteroid 12818 Tomhanks is named after him.

  At 45, Hanks became the youngest-ever recipient of the American Film Institute's Life Achievement Award on the 12th of June, 2002. When he was starring in Nora Ephron's Lucky Guy on Broadway in 2013, crowds of 300 fans waited after every performance, the highest number of expectant fans post-show in Broadway history. In May 2025, he received the Sylvanus Thayer Award from the West Point Association of Graduates, recognizing his positive portrayal of American service members and his support for veterans and the space program, though the ceremony itself was cancelled.