Oscar Profile #273: Tom Hanks

Born Thomas Jeffrey (Tom) Hanks in Concord, California on July 9, 1956, America’s Most Popular Actor (according to a January 2016 Harris Poll) is of English-German ancestry on his father’s side and Portuguese on his mother’s. Raised by his father after his parents’ divorce in 1960, he attended Chabot College and California State University at Sacramento where he met first wife, actress Samantha Lewes with whom he had two children including son, actor Colin Hanks.

Moving to New York in 1979, he made his film debut in the slasher film, He Knows You’re Alone released in 1980, the same year he landed the co-lead in TV’s Bosom Buddies which made him an overnight sensation. He had his first starring role on the big screen in 1984’s Splash, a major box-office hit, followed in the remainder of the decade by such other hits as Bachelor Party, The Money Pit, Big (His first Oscar nomination), The ‘Burbs and Turner & Hooch. Divorced from Lewes in 1987, he married second wife Rita Wilson in 1988 with whom he had another two children.

Hanks received his first strong critical notices since 1988’s Big for 1992’s A League of Their Own and won even stronger notices for 1993’s Sleepless in Seattle and Philadelphia, receiving his second Oscar nomination and first win for the latter. 1994’s Forrest Gump would bring him his second Oscar on his third nomination, making him the first in the lead actor category since Spencer Tracy fifty-six years earlier to win back-to-back Oscars. He failed to receive a nomination for 1995’s Apollo 13, but that film and the same year’s Toy Story solidified his reputation as one of the most popular actors of the modern era.

The actor received his fourth Oscar nomination for 1998’s Saving Private Ryan and had another major success with the same year’s You’ve Got Mail. His good fortune continued with 1999’s The Green Mile and Toy Story 2 and 2000’s Cast Away which brought him his fifth and final Oscar nomination to date. In 2001 he co-produced the landmark TV mini-series, Band of Brothers with Steven Spielberg in which he had a minor role. In 2002 starred in two more critically acclaimed smash hits, Road to Perdition and Catch Me If You Can. The remainder of the decade saw him in such films as Terminal, The Da Vinci Code, Charlie Wilson’s War and Angels & Demons. In 2010 he narrated The Pacific, the second TV mini-series about World War II that he co-produced with Spielberg. That same year he was again the voice of Woody in Toy Story 3.

Hanks has starred in a Best Picture nominee every other year this decade beginning with 2011’s Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close and continuing with 2013’s Captain Phillips and 2015’s Bridge of Spies. He has five films in various stages of post-production for release this year including Clint Eastwood’s Sully and Ron Howard’s Inferno. Toy Story 4 is in pre-production for a June, 2018 release.

It’s hard to believe, but Tom Hanks will be 60 this year.

ESSENTIAL FILMS

Philadelphia (1993), directed by Jonathan Demme

Hanks won his first Oscar for his portrayal of a gay lawyer dying of AIDS who sues his firm for wrongful dismissal after he is fired due to his illness. It was the first film from a major Hollywood studio (Columbia TriStar) after the success of TV’s An Early Frost in 1985 and the made-for-TV Longtime Companion released theatrically by the Samuel Goldwyn Company in 1990. Denzel Washington co-starred as Hanks’ homophobic defense counsel, Antonio Banderas played his lover and Joanne Woodward made her last on-screen appearance as his mother.

Forrest Gump (1994), directed by Robert Zemeckis

Hanks won his second Oscar for playing a simple man with a low I.Q. who stumbles onto great events throughout his life from birth to middle age. The film seamlessly weaves fact and fiction together to form a tapestry of mid to late twentieth century American life. The actor is beautifully supported by Robin Wright as his true love, Sally Field as his mother, Gary Sinise and Mykelti Williamson as his Vietnam War Army buddies and five-year-old Haley Joel Osment as his son. The film won a total of Six Oscars out of 13 nominations including Best Picture and Best Director (Robert Zemeckis).

Saving Private Ryan (1994), directed by Steven Spielberg

Hanks received his fourth Oscar nomination, his first since his back-to-back wins for his portrayal of the Army captain given a mission to find the lone surviving son of a mother of four in the chaos of the aftermath of the World War II Normandy landing. Acclaimed by many as the greatest war movie ever made, the film, considered a shoo-in for the Best Picture Oscar of its year lost in a still talked about upset to Shakespeare in Love. Hanks and Spielberg later co-produced the TV mini-series Band of Brothers about the war in Europe and The Pacific about the war on that front.

Captain Phillips (2003), directed by Paul Greengrass

Hanks plays the real-life Captain Richard Phillips in the story of the 2009 hijacking of by Somali pirates of the US-flagged MV Maersk Alabama, the first American cargo ship to be hijacked in two hundred years. Although the film was nominated for six Oscars including Best Picture and Best Supporting Actor for Barkhad Abdi who played the leader of the hijackers, Hanks himself was surprisingly not nominated for his portrayal of the title character. He was also snubbed in the supporting category for his portrayal of Walt Disney in Saving Mr. Banks when both films were expected to bring him nominations.

Bridge of Spies (2015), directed by Steven Spielberg

Spielberg received his tenth Oscar nomination for Best Director of this real-life 1950s spy drama, but Hanks was once again passed over for a nomination for Best Actor. He plays James B. Donovan, the lawyer requested by the government to defend a Russian agent (Best Supporting Actor nominee Mark Rylance) who then negotiates a deal with the Soviets to exchange him for U.S. spy Francis Gary Powers and the East Germans for a U.S. grad student falsely charged with espionage in East Berlin. It is one of Spielberg’s most impeccably made films featuring one of Hanks’ finest performances.