TOM HANKS

TOM HANKS
Born: 9 July 1956Where: Concord, California USAAwards: 2 Oscars, 3 Emmys, 4 Golden GlobesHeight: 6' 1"
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. 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.
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. 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. 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. Tom took off for New York City and the bright lights of Broadway, taking an apartment with Samantha in Hell's Kitchen. Just extra pressure as Samantha gave birth to their first child, Colin. 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 humour that would eventually turn Hanks into a megastar.
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. 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, 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.
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. 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.
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. 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 to win consecutive Best Actor statues.
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. 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. He'd also be given the Distinguished Public Service Award, the highest honour 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. 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.
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. 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.
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.
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. Returning abandoned luggage trolleys for quarters, he soon learns how to survive, and becomes important to all the staff, winning them over with his trusting, trustworthy, near like manner.
Having in 2005 been elected as the new Vice President of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Hanks would next snap up one of the more coveted roles in recent times when he reunited with director Ron Howard for The Da Vinci Code. Based on Dan Brown's bestseller, this would see him as a fusty academic teaming up with sexy cryptologist Audrey Tautou and getting drawn into a hugely convoluted conspiracy involving murderous albinos, secret Christian sects and the Holy Grail.