One of the greatest actors in Hollywood history, Tom Hanks is the most consistently popular and bankable movie star in the world today. With a nearly $6 billion combined international gross plus two Best Actor Oscars for his films, Hanks is in the same class as Hollywood legends Jimmy Stewart, Cary Grant, and Jack Nicholson.
Hanks was born in Concord, California on July 9, 1956, and moved around frequently with his parents until settling in Oakland when he was eight. His parents’ relationship crumbled when Hanks was young, and several attempts at revitalizing the marriage lent his childhood a nomadic quality. Self-described as a nerdy and generally unremarkable kid, Hanks acted in a few school plays but never seriously considered a career in the arts until he took acting classes at Sacramento State University. A chance meeting with the director of the Great Lakes Theater Festival in Cleveland, Ohio led Hanks to the mid-western city, where he served as an intern for the festival instead of finishing college. His three years in the theatre world convinced him that acting was in his future, especially after winning the Cleveland Critics Circle Award for a performance as Proteus in Shakespeare’s “Two Gentlemen of Verona”.
The ambitious young actor moved to New York in 1978, and first found success with the TV comedy “Bosom Buddies”, which ran for two years and was a hit with critics despite its low ratings. Then in L.A., Hanks was downtrodden by the show’s cancellation until director Ron Howard contacted him to audition for 1984’s “Splash”. Howard enjoyed Hanks on the short-lived comedy series, and originally wanted him for the sidekick role in “Splash” that eventually went to John Candy. Hanks ended up grabbing the lead alongside Daryl Hannah, and the mermaid-meets-man comedy became a box office smash, putting Hanks on the map as a major comedic star.
A period of hits and misses followed for the actor, as comedies like “The Money Pit” failed to ignite much excitement. A return to the top came in 1988 with the smash hit “Big”, for which he earned his first Best Actor Oscar nomination, but he again fell into a slump with “The ‘Burbs”, “Joe Versus the Volcano”, and the colossal flop “The Bonfire of the Vanities”. Though Hanks had earned praise as a dramatic actor in 1986’s “Nothing in Common”, “Bonfire” was a notoriously ill-conceived mess, failing to capture the hysterical satire of Tom Wolfe’s seminal novel. Hanks’s slump was over quickly, however, after terrific performances in 1992’s “A League of Their Own” and the following year’s smash romantic comedy “Sleepless in Seattle”, which made Hanks and co-star Meg Ryan icons of the genre.
1993’s “Philadelphia” arguably made Hanks the star he is today. Playing a gay lawyer with AIDS who sues his firm for discrimination, Hanks gave a nuanced and moving performance that earned him his first Academy Award for Best Actor. The powerful film, which co-starred Denzel Washington, gave major mainstream visibility to the problems facing homosexuals in mainstream society, and established Hanks as a daring and enormously talented dramatic actor.
The 13 years since have seen Hanks in a long string of artistic and commercial successes, including his Oscar-winning turn in the blockbuster “Forrest Gump”, “Apollo 13”, and Steven Spielberg’s stunning World War II film “Saving Private Ryan”, which earned him a fourth Oscar nod. Hanks then reunited with Meg Ryan in “You’ve Got Mail”, starred in the prison drama “The Green Mile”, earned a fifth Oscar nomination for “Cast Away”, and gave an underrated performance in Sam Mendes’s penetrating drama “Road to Perdition”. Spielberg has used Hanks in two more of his films, the Leonardo DiCaprio vehicle “Catch Me If You Can” and 2004’s airport comedy “The Terminal”. The unpretentious actor also earned the American Film Institute’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 2002, becoming the youngest actor to do so.
Hanks has been married to actress Rita Wilson since 1988, and the couple have two children together. His first marriage, to Samantha Lewes, also produced two children, one of whom is rising star Colin Hanks. He is currently on screen uncovering Catholic conspiracies with Audrey Tautou and Ian McKellen in the long-awaited film version of “The Da Vinci Code”. The immensely likable and unfailingly talented actor still has decades of terrific performances to come, and thankfully for us he shows no signs of slowing down.