Tom Hanks

Thomas Jeffrey Hanks, born July 9, 1956, in Concord, California, is an American actor and filmmaker whose career has run through television, film, theater, and production. Known for both comic and dramatic work, he became one of the most popular and recognizable film stars worldwide and is regarded as an American cultural icon. In 2020, he was ranked as the fourth-highest-grossing American film actor of all time. His awards include two Academy Awards, seven Emmy Awards, and four Golden Globe Awards, along with nominations for five BAFTA Awards and a Tony Award.

Hanks first broke through on television as a co-lead in the ABC sitcom Bosom Buddies, which ran from 1980 to 1982. His rise in film came with leading roles in comedies such as Splash (1984), The Money Pit (1986), Big (1988), and A League of Their Own (1992). He then won two consecutive Academy Awards for Best Actor: for playing a gay lawyer suffering from AIDS in Philadelphia (1993), and for playing the title character in Forrest Gump (1994). Those two performances helped define the range that would mark much of his career.

His best-known work spans many kinds of films. He starred in the romantic comedies Sleepless in Seattle (1993) and You’ve Got Mail (1998); the dramas Apollo 13 (1995), The Green Mile (1999), Cast Away (2000), Road to Perdition (2002), Cloud Atlas (2012), and News of the World (2020); and biographical dramas including Captain Phillips (2013), Sully (2016), A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (2019), and Elvis (2022). He played Robert Langdon in a film series from 2006 to 2016, voiced Sheriff Woody in the Toy Story franchise beginning in 1995, and performed multiple roles in The Polar Express (2004). He also directed and acted in That Thing You Do! (1996) and Larry Crowne (2011).

Collaboration has been a steady part of Hanks’s career. With Steven Spielberg, he made 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 worked together on World War II-themed miniseries: Band of Brothers (2001), The Pacific (2010), and Masters of the Air (2024). Hanks has frequently worked with Ron Howard, Nora Ephron, and Robert Zemeckis. Through his production company, Playtone, he has helped produce limited series and television movies including From the Earth to the Moon (1998), John Adams (2008), Game Change (2012), and Olive Kitteridge (2015). He made his Broadway debut in Ephron’s Lucky Guy (2013), earning a Tony nomination.

The habits behind that career began early. Hanks’s parents divorced when he was young, and by age ten he had lived in ten different houses. He later described himself in school as “a geek, a spaz” and “horribly, painfully, terribly shy,” though he was also the student who called out funny captions during filmstrips. He acted in school plays, studied theater at Chabot College and California State University, Sacramento, and spent long hours going to plays by himself. An internship at the Great Lakes Theater Festival in Cleveland grew into three years of work across lighting, set design, and stage management. For readers looking for words that still land with force, Hanks’s career offers a rare mix: the comic voice, the dramatic role, the public honor, and the plain-spoken memory of a shy kid who found his way through performance.