Tom Hanks: A Living Legend
PC: Richard Shotwell | Associated Press
Forrest Gump, Walt Disney and Woody the cowboy. These three roles and dozens more will define Tom Hanks’ career long after he retires. The 64-year-old actor has been part of the film industry since 1980 and has left a resounding impact on it.
Hanks’ feature film debut was a slasher movie, “He Knows You’re Alone,” where he played a minor character. Over the next three years, Hanks acted in a number of television shows including “Family Ties,” “Happy Days” and “Bosom Buddies.”
His performance in these television shows led to director Ron Howard approaching him to play a role in 1984’s “Splash,” He ended up nailing the lead role. “Splash” went on to make almost $70 million worldwide.
While “Splash” was Hanks’ first starring role, he did not fall into the mainstream from it. His break through was in 1988, with feature film “Big,” which earned him his first Oscar nomination for best actor.
After the success of “Big,” Hanks had a few films that did not do well. With the exception of “Turner and Hooch,” his next big film was 1992’s “A League of Their Own.”
“Oh, I’d go through horrible doldrums,” Hanks said in an interview with The Guardian in 2017. “I’ve made an awful lot of movies that didn’t make any sense, and didn’t make any money, but that doesn’t alter the work that goes into it, or even what your opinion of it is.”
Through the course of the 1990s, Hanks became a household name, starring in several films including “Sleepless in Seattle,” “Apollo 13” and “Saving Private Ryan.”
PC; Paramount Pictures
In the same decade, Hanks consecutively won the Academy Award for best actor. The first came in 1993 for his role in “Philadelphia” as a gay lawyer. The second and more notable was for his performance in “Forrest Gump” as the titular character.
In 1995, Pixar casted Hanks in one of his biggest roles of all time, ‘Toy Story”‘s Woody. Hanks played Woody in all four installments of the series and also in “Toy Story” specials.
Hanks has had several notable roles over the 2000s and 2010s. They include Chuck Noland in “Castaway,” Robert Langdon in “The DaVinci Code” and Fred Rogers in “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood.”
His next release, “BIOS,” is slated for April of this year. It is the post-apocalyptic story of a man who creates a robot to take care of his dog after he dies.