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Biography
The most likeable star of his generation,
Tom Hanks is a throwback to the days when James Stewart and Gary Cooper
lorded it over Hollywood. Whether he's playing a 35-year-old kid, a
simpleton from Alabama, a sullen soldier, a mobster hitman or even a
lawyer suffering from AIDS, people react well to him - he possesses an
all-too-rare nice-guy charm. He's willing to put that charm to the test,
too. In Cast Away, for well over an hour, we saw nothing but Hanks - no
pretty love interest, no wisecracking sidekick, not even a comedy dog.
And, such is the weight Hanks carries with a worldwide audience, such is
the skill he has developed over two decades plying his trade, he pulled
it off. Cast Away was another huge hit, his 11th in nine years. And more
was to come. Only Tom Cruise can match him as the biggest box-office
draw of them all.
Thomas J. Hanks was born on July 9th, 1956, in Concord, California, a
direct descendant of an uncle of Nancy Hanks, the mother of Abraham
Lincoln. His parents split when he was young, the details of their
divorce making them "pioneers in the development of marriage
dissolution in California". Tom and his two older siblings, Sandra
and Larry, went with their father, Amos, a chef. A younger brother, Jim,
stayed with mother Janet (Jim would later appear in several of Tom's
productions, including acting as his running double in Forrest Gump).
Dad's work enforced a nomadic existence upon them, with the kids shifted
from school to school, never able to form lasting friendships, making
Hanks painfully shy. It didn't help that Amos was married twice after
Janet, Tom explaining that, by the age of 10, he'd had "three
mothers, five grammar schools and ten houses".
Eventually, in 1966, Amos settled in Oakland, where Tom had to get used
to a new mother and new siblings. Here he attended both junior high and
Skyline High School, where he indulged his early interests in space and
baseball, excelled at soccer and on the track and "became the loud
one" - a trick he'd learned when trying to get attention in a
succession of new schools.
It was at Skyline that he became
interested in acting. Impressed by a buddy in a school production of
Dracula, he joined the Thespian Club and forced his way in by sheer
weight of enthusiasm. First he was stage manager on My Fair Lady, then
won roles in Night Of The Iguana, Twelfth Night and South Pacific, the
last of these winning him Skyline's Best Actor of 1974 award.
On graduation, he enrolled at Chabot College, close by in Hayward,
working as a sideline as a bellboy at the local Hilton. Doing the
occasional drama class, he was required at one point to attend a
Berkeley Repertory Company performance of Eugene O'Neill's The Iceman
Cometh. It proved a formative experience, with young Tom wholly taken by
the performance of Joe Spano who'd recently appeared in American
Graffiti (he'd later show up in Hanks' own Apollo 13 and From The Earth
To The Moon). Tom decided there and then that he wanted to be as good as
Spano.
After two years at Chabot, he transferred to California State University
in Sacramento. Here he made two vital connections. First was with Susan
Dillingham, who'd later take Samantha Lewes as her stage name and become
Tom's first wife. Then there was Vincent Dowling. Tom had been trying to
get into university stage productions to no avail, being forced to
content himself with set-building. Frustrated, he auditioned for a local
theatre production of Chekov's The Cherry Orchard, winning the role of
Yasha. Dowling, the director, was so impressed he invited Hanks to join
him at the Great Lakes Shakespeare Festival in Cleveland, of which he
was artistic director.
So, in the summer of 1977, off Tom went for his first taste of
professional acting, earning $210 a week as Gremio in The Taming Of The
Shrew. Samantha would join him, the pair moving in together. With the
company touring into December, Tom went AWOL from Cal State - he never
returned. Instead, he took work at the Civic Theatre in Sacramento,
learning all the backstage mechanics of the trade. Then, in the summer
of '78, he returned to Cleveland, playing Proteus in Two Gentlemen Of
Verona and winning a Best Actor award from the Cleveland Critics Circle.
Aged just 22 and picking up major awards
already - how could he fail? Tom took off for New York City and the
bright lights of Broadway, taking an apartment with Samantha in Hell's
Kitchen. But there was no work - just extra pressure as Samantha gave
birth to their first child, Colin (now an actor in his own right,
starring in Orange County).
Keen for employment, Hanks returned to
the Great Lakes Festival for the summer of 1979, to play Bottom in A
Midsummer Night's Dream. His former director, Dowling, would later claim
"He was the best Shakespearian clown I ever knew, because he was
seriously real and seriously funny at the same time". It was this
"realness" and humor that would eventually turn Hanks into a
megastar.
Returning to New York in late '79, Tom found work at the Riverside
Shakespeare Theatre, as Callimaco in The Mandrake. More importantly, he
got a manager, and this led to his first screen role, amazingly in the
infamous slasher flick He Knows You're Alone, where a psycho's menacing
a bridal party. Well, it was a start.
January, 1980, brought the first really big break. The ABC network had
launched a talent development programme in the hope of finding some hot
young kids to pep up their ratings. Tom went for it, enduring a
gruelling series of auditions before landing one of the two leads in the
sit-com Bosom Buddies. Here Peter Scolari and Tom played two ad execs,
Henry Desmond and Kip Wilson, who can't find an apartment.
Then, when they do, it's in a women-only
building, meaning they must continually cross-dress and call themselves
Hildegard and Buffy (that's right, Tom Hanks played a girl called Buffy
YEARS before Sarah
Michelle Gellar). It was a cute idea, but not one that would run and
run. Bosom Buddies lasted for two seasons, Scolari later turning up in
Tom's That Thing You Do! And From The Earth To The Moon.
In the meantime, Tom had moved the family to the San Fernando Valley,
Samantha giving birth to daughter Elizabeth. With Bosom Buddies over,
Tom had to look elsewhere, and nabbed brief spots on Michael J. Fox's
Family Ties, The Love Boat and, vitally, Happy Days. There he met Richie
Cunningham, or rather Ron Howard, then launching as career as a
director. When Howard was casting for his next film, Splash, about a
sweet guy's love affair with a mermaid, he called up Hanks to test for a
supporting role. So good was he that he got the lead instead, the lesser
role going to John Candy.
Splash, which saw Hanks hankering after
Daryl Hannah, made Tom a minor star, and kept him employed throughout
the mid-Eighties. The roustabout Bachelor Party was a commercial
success, then came Volunteers, where he played a debt-ridden playboy
joining the Peace Corps in Thailand. This saw him alongside Candy once
more, and also one Rita Wilson, who he'd earlier met when she popped up
as Peter Scolari's Satan-worshipping girlfriend in Bosom Buddies.
Next came The Man With One Red Shoe,
where Tom was a dopey violinist caught up in intra-CIA shenanigans, and
the hilarious The Money Pit, where he and Shelley Long have their house
renovated, only to see it gradually collapse around their ears. There'd
also be Nothing In Common, where he looked after his sick father (a bit
close to the bone, this one, as Amos by this time suffered from the
kidney failure that would kill him), and Every Time We Say Goodbye, set
in Jerusalem, 1942, where he fell for a girl whose parents disapprove of
him. The last of these proved that Tom could manage a romantic lead in a
"serious" movie. It also earned him his first $1 million
paycheck.
But, though Tom's career was on the up and up, his marriage was falling
apart. Not wanting his kids to suffer as he had done, he took a break
from film-making in 1985 to produce, direct AND build sets for a
production of The Passing Game at the Gene Dynarski Theatre, with his
wife Samantha co-producing and starring. It didn't work. By the end of
the year, Tom and Samantha were separated.
Despite the break, Tom was getting ever hotter. Dragnet, a semi-spoof of
the old TV cop show, was fairly lame but a financial success. Then came
Punchline, where he played Stephen Gold, a bitter and angry comedian who
first abuses then helps housewife Sally Field as she attempts to learn
the comic craft. For research, Hanks wrote his own material and tried it
out live at various LA comedy clubs.
And then came the first big one, appropriately titled Big, directed by
another sitcom star turned director, Penny Marshall (Laverne from
Laverne and Shirley). As Josh Baskin, a kid trapped in a man's body,
working for a toy company and winning the heart of cold exec Elizabeth
Perkins, Hanks was hyperactive, endlessly curious, near-perfect, and
Oscar-nominated for the first time. Incredible, given he was third
choice, behind Harrison
Ford and Robert
De Niro. Big would be his first $100 million hit. Many more would
follow.
Hanks' profile rose steadily as a suspicious suburbanite in The 'Burbs,
as a cop with a doggy partner in Turner And Hooch, and Joe Versus The
Volcano, where he played a goofy guy who, with a short while to live,
gets a rich man to pay him to jump into an active volcano. This last
movie paired him for the first time with Meg Ryan, later co-star in two
of his biggest hits. But then Hanks' ability to survive poor movies
unscathed was sorely challenged when he played Sherman McCoy, the
"master of the universe" and stock-trader drawn into a racial
controversy after a hit-and-run accident in Brian De Palma's expensive,
gaudy Bonfire Of The Vanities. The movie was considered one of the worst
flops in history, threatening to finish him for good.
Fortunately, by now his personal life was
coming together. With his first marriage over, Tom was free to date Rita
Wilson, and the couple were wed, with son Chester being born in 1990,
followed by another boy, Truman. Having learned from experience what a
heavy workload can do to a relationship, he took a couple of years off,
enjoying his new family and waiting for the right part to kick-start his
career.
The right part came soon, alongside Geena Davis and Madonna, in
Marshall's A League Of Their Own - the first in an outrageous run of
hits. Here he played Jimmy Dugan, a former baseball star who's lost his
career to injury and consoled himself with heavy drinking. Given a
chance at redemption, he finds himself in charge of a women's baseball
side which, after much comic incompetence, he inspires to become one of
the finest ever.
Next, paired with Ryan once again, came Sleepless In Seattle. Here he
was a sweet and kind widower who cannot find a woman to match his dear
departed. When his young son contacts a radio show, Tom talks of love
on-air and attracts the attention of a romantically confused Ryan. And
so, amidst a welter of coincidences and near-misses, the couple are
drawn ever closer together. Funny, witty and not overly sentimental, as
well as well-conceived and paced by writer/director Nora Ephron, it was
a massive hit, and featured a natty cameo by Tom's wife Rita.
And 1993 brought yet more success to Hanks. The often harrowing
Philadelphia saw him as lawyer Andrew Beckett who, sacked when he
contracts AIDS, sues for discrimination and takes on Denzel
Washington as his lawyer. With Denzel's character being a major
homophobe, director Jonathan Demme was able to attack prejudice and
promote justice in a mainstream fashion, rather than delving into the
gay lifestyle. Some gay activists complained, but Hanks' brilliant
performance and a stirring storyline gave the fight against AIDS some of
the best publicity it ever had. Tom was duly presented with an Oscar
and, incredibly, his acceptance speech, where he thanked his old teacher
at Skyline, Rawley T. Farnsworth, inspired another movie, Kevin Kline's
In And Out.
Then it got even better. 1994's epic Forrest Gump had him as an idiot
savant raising hearts and minds over a 40-year period, including the
Vietnam war. Gary Sinise added grit as an embittered vet, damaged inside
and out, while Sally Field reappeared, this time as Tom's doting mum,
the one who teaches him such world-altering pearls as "Life is like
a box of chocolates". With its home-spun wisdom and relentless
humanity, Forrest Gump was beyond feel-good. And it cleaned up, with Tom
winning another Oscar, making him the first man in 55 years (since
Spencer Tracy) to win consecutive Best Actor statues.
Normally when actors hit such peaks they
fall away, at least for a while. Not Hanks. 1995 was another scorcher.
First he provided the voice of Sheriff Woody in the brilliant Toy Story.
Then he was back with Ron Howard as Jim Lovell in Apollo 13, intoning
the immortal line "Houston, we have a problem" and presenting
the emotional side of the struggle to bring the damaged spacecraft back
to Earth. With Hanks still obsessed with space, it must have been a real
joy. It's a wonder that he hadn't demanded the part of Buzz Lightyear.
Though Forrest Gump and Apollo 13 made $500 million between them, Tom
now took his foot off the pedal and concentrated on his own thing.
Turning down the part of Jerry Maguire, he turned to writing and
directing with That Thing You Do!, about Sixties one-hit wonders The
Wonders. It was nice and engaging - far away from the Oscar-winning
extravaganzas that were now dominating his life.
But he couldn't stay away for long. 1998 brought You've Got Mail,
another rom-com, reuniting him with Ephron and Ryan. Then he starred in
a real event movie, Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan. Here he was
Captain John Miller, leading a small band of brothers through Occupied
France in search of Matt
Damon's Private Ryan, and this after having survived the terrifying
mayhem of the D-Day landings. It was another triumph, with Tom
Oscar-nominated once more. He'd also be given the Distinguished Public
Service Award, the highest honor the US Navy can confer upon a civilian.
Such was Saving Private Ryan's effect that Hanks and Spielberg felt the
need to do it all over again, with the award-winning miniseries Band Of
Brothers. Before this, though, Tom would score again with Toy Story 2
and Stephen King's The Green Mile, wherein he played Paul Edgecomb, a
kind-hearted guard of Death Row who realises that the condemned Michael
Clarke Duncan might be some kind of mystic healer. A year later came
Cast Away, reuniting him with Gump director Robert Zemeckis, when he
played Fed Ex exec Chuck Noland, marooned on a desert island after a
particularly frightening plane crash. As mentioned before, for much of
the movie we see only Hanks, and we're just watching his battle for
survival as he seldom says anything (though he does talk to a volleyball
called Wilson - as in Rita Wilson). It's proof of Hanks ability and
charm that we don't care - he says it all without words, well deserving
his fifth Oscar nomination.
But it wasn't just Oscar nods that came
his way. Back in '98, Hanks had also returned to writing and directing,
as well as producing, with From The Earth To The Moon. This, revisiting
his old obsession with infinity and beyond, was one of the biggest
miniseries ever made, a drama-documentary covering the NASA space
programme of the Sixties and Seventies. It would win an Emmy as
Outstanding Series, with Tom (who co-wrote 4 of the 12 episodes) being
nominated for his directing of the first instalment. His old mucker
Sally Field was also involved as co-director.
2002 was another monster year. First came Sam Mendes' Road To Perdition.
Here Hanks played Michael Sullivan, a hitman for mobster Paul Newman.
Cold and utterly ruthless, he's nevertheless forced to revise his
attitudes when his young son witnesses one of his killings and, of
course, must be eliminated. To prevent this, Sullivan takes the kid on
the lam, pursued by Jude
Law's implacable assassin Maguire. After this came Catch Me If You
Can, pairing Hanks with Spielberg yet again, with Tom as FBI agent Carl
Hanratty, cooly tracking down Leonardo DiCaprio's Frank Abagnale, a con
man and master of disguise. It was another mighty hit, taking $164
million at the US box-office, on a budget of only $52 million.
Incredibly, this wasn't all for 2002. Tom also co-produced the comedy My
Big Fat Greek Wedding, which cost $5 million and, having spent 20 weeks
slowly climbing the charts, made well over $50 million at the US
box-office alone. AND there was a cameo in the long-awaited Rutles
follow-up, Can't Buy Me Lunch.
2004 would see his next assault on the box-office, but would also see an
end to his remarkable dominance. The Ladykillers was a typically
outlandish Coen Brothers remake of the old Alec Guinness hit, with Hanks
starring as Goldthwait Higginson Dorr, a bizarre Southerner claiming to
be a classics professor and dressing somewhat like Colonel Sanders.
Taking rooms in a little old lady's house, he recruits an oddball crew
and, pretending they are a musical ensemble, plots to rob a nearby
casino. The movie wasn't a success, it was too cliched and brash, but,
though it dropped out of the Top 10 after only two weeks, it still
slipped into profit and Hanks, managing to keep Dorr's florid speech
just this side of ridiculous, continued to push at his own boundaries.
Quickly after this came another reunion
with Spielberg and another character guaranteed to capture the heart of
the US audience. In The Terminal, he played an eastern European arriving
at JFK airport to find that his country has fallen in a coup and his
passport and visa are now worthless. Thus he cannot go home or step onto
American soil and must stay in the International Departures lounge.
Returning abandoned luggage trolleys for quarters, he soon learns how to
survive, and becomes important to all the staff (including hostess
Catherine Zeta-Jones), winning them over with his trusting, trustworthy,
near-Gump-like manner. It was a fine comedy, delicate and brilliantly
timed, particularly in Hanks' dealings with frustrated customs officer
Stanley Tucci, and held up well against a string of summer blockbusters.
After lending his voice to Robert Zemeckis's animated Christmas parable
The Polar Express, Hanks moved on to A Cold Case, directed by Mark
Romanek who'd disappeared after 1987's weird but fantastic Static but
recently returned with Robin
Williams' One Hour Photo. Here he played an investigator who, for 27
years, has been haunted by the murder of his best friend. Now, on the
verge of retirement, he decides he must solve the case to find any kind
of personal contentment.
Then would come Lawrence Kasdan's The
Risk Pool, based on Richard Russo's novel, where he played a charming
but thoroughly unreliable thief and gambler who's forced to look after
his son when his estranged wife suffers a breakdown. There'd also be the
western Boone's Lick, a Larry McMurtry piece with a similar feel to his
Lonesome Dove, which would see Julianne
Moore dragging her father and four kids from Missouri out to the
Wyoming fort where her husband is based. Hanks would play her husband's
brother who escorts the family and, naturally, falls for Moore as he
aids in some perilous adventures.
If his extraordinary run of hits isn't proof enough of the respect he's
garnered from peers and public alike, consider this: when Steven
Spielberg, the biggest director in the world, wants a hero, someone
could can play a good guy in a bad position and somehow make it
interesting, he calls Hanks. And when Sam Mendes, perhaps the hippest
director out there, needed someone to pull off a cold-hearted murderer
who also loves his son, he called Hanks too. We all know he can play a
loving father with his brain disengaged, but he's hardly known for his
murderers. But what he IS known for is his acting. Of COURSE he can do a
murderer. He's TOM HANKS, for Christ's sake.~ Dominic Wills |
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