Getting to Know :Tom Hanks

With A Man Called Otto in cinemas and Elvis picking up plaudits during award season, Cinema Paradiso deems it high time that we get to know Tom Hanks a little better.

In September 2022, while announcing the forthcoming publication of his first novel, The Making of Another Major Motion Picture Masterpiece, Tom Hanks declared, 'I've made a ton of movies (and four of them are pretty good, I think). ' It was a typically self-deprecating remark by an actor who is frequently referred to as the nicest man in movies. Indeed, the New York Times once called Hanks 'an avatar of American goodness'.

Comparisons have often been made to James Stewart. But don't be fooled. Hanks has an inner steel and has worked as hard at keeping his off-screen self private as he has at attaining his enduring status. As he once told the Los Angeles Times, 'If people don't know the real me or know what my life's about, that's good, because I don't want them to.' We're not ones to pry at Cinema Paradiso, although we do feel there's more to the secret of Tom Hanks's success than his adherence to Spencer Tracy's mantra: 'Learn the lines. Hit the marks. Tell the truth.'

Come In, Number Eight

Born in Concord, California on 9 July 1956, Thomas Jeffrey Hanks was the third child of itinerant cook Amos 'Bud' Hanks and hospital worker Janet Marylyn Frager. His mother came from Portuguese stock, while his father's line made him a third cousin, four times removed of Abraham Lincoln. In 2013, Hanks narrated Adrian Moat's National Geographic documentary, Killing Lincoln, while another piece of ancestral overlap would see him play sixth cousin Fred Rogers in Marielle Heller's A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (2019).

When his parents divorced in 1960, Bud took Tom and elder siblings, Sandra and Larry, to Reno, Nevada, while younger brother Jim remained with his mother in Red Bluff, California. Sandra would go on to become a writer, while Larry became a professor of entomology. Jim, however, followed in Tom's footsteps and has occasionally stood in for him because of their physical and vocal similarity. Look closely at some of the running shots in Robert Zemeckis's Forrest Gump (1994) and double check those Toy Story commercials and video games, as you may well be listening to Jim Hanks voicing Woody rather than Tom.

After Bud's second marriage failed, he moved the family to Oakland, California, where he married mother of three, Frances Wong, in 1965. Janet would have three more husbands, with the result that, by the time he was 10, Tom had lived in 10 different houses and attended five different schools. There were so many children around that he was known as 'Number Eight'. The constant changing meant he didn't grow particularly close to his step-siblings, however, and he has seen little of them in later life.

Hanks has insisted that his chaotic childhood taught him to adapt to changing circumstances and made him an optimist. It also made him self-dependent, as 'I kind of like fell through the cracks and didn't really have adults per se that were taking care of me.' In retrospect, he looks back with a degree of gratitude, as 'I actually had the perfect background for the guy whose job it is to put on clothes that are not his and pretend to be somebody that he's not.'

The teenage Tom sometimes felt lonely and sought refuge in religion. Fascinated by the Second World War and the Apollo space programme, he felt like a geek and suffered from being 'horribly, painfully, terribly shy'. But he liked getting laughs from smart alec quips in class and also came out of himself while selling peanuts and drinks at Oakland Athletics baseball games.

He also enjoyed going to the pictures and ranked Robert Aldrich's The Dirty Dozen (1967) and Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) among his boyhood favourites. Indeed, he claims to have seen the latter over 100 times. However, he had no ambitions to act until a friend landed a role in a production of Dracula at Skyline High School. As he revealed during his first Oscar acceptance speech, drama teacher Rawley Farnsworth took Hanks under his wing and he played cross-dressing Luther Billis in South Pacific (Ray Walston had taken the role in Joshua Logan's 1958 film version of the Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein musical).

Such was his determination to succeed that Hanks started going to the theatre alone to familiarise himself with the work of the leading playwrights and pick up tips on acting technique. He even sent a letter to a classmate's uncle with a plan for him to 'discover' Hanks and make him a star. The recipient of the letter was George Roy Hill, who had directed Paul Newman and Robert Redford in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) and The Sting (1973). He wrote back suggesting that he could bump into Hanks as he went to school on his pogo stick.

Following a short stint at Chabot Community College in Hayward, Hanks enrolled on a theatre course at California State University in Sacramento in 1976. In order to make ends meet, he worked as a bellhop for Hilton hotels and recalls taking Cher's bags to her room and driving Sidney Poitier to the airport. During his first summer, he took an internship at the Great Lakes Shakespeare Festival in Cleveland, Ohio, where he fell under the spell of Irish director, Vincent Dowling, who convinced him that 'work in the theatre is more fun than fun'.

Dropping out of college, Hanks spent three years learning about stage design, lighting, and theatre management, as well as acting. Dowling also nurtured his essential niceness by teaching Hanks that being 'a squeaky wheel' is disrespectful to everyone else in the company. The advice paid off, as, following a walk-on as a servant in Anton Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard, Hanks was cast as Grumio in The Taming of the Shrew. Moreover, his performance as Proteus in another Shakespearean production, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, earned him the 1978 Cleveland Critics Circle Award for Best Actor. At the age of 22, Hanks was ready to try his luck in New York.

Second-rate Bill Murray Films

In 1978, Hanks sold his Volkswagen Beetle and set out to make it on Broadway. His progress was modest, although he did land the lead of Callimaco in the Riverside Shakespeare Company's production of Niccolò Machiavelli's The Mandrake. He also broke into television via an episode of The Love Boat and made his feature bow in Armand Mastroianni's slasher, He Knows You're Alone (both 1980).

His luck changed, however, when he landed the role of Kip Wilson opposite Peter Scolari's Henry Desmond in the cult sitcom, Bosom Buddies (1980-82), in which two advertising men have to pose as Buffy and Hildegard in order to get cheap rooms in an all-female hotel. Hailed for his ability to improvise (which he had honed with Scolari on the game show, Make Me Laugh), Hanks was recruited for Steven Hilliard Stern's teleplay, Mazes and Monsters, as well as for episodes of the hit sitcoms, Taxi, Happy Days (both 1982), and Family Ties (1983).

Ron Howard, who had played Richie Cunningham on Happy Days, was so impressed by Hanks in 'A Case of Revenge' that he sought him out to play Allen Bauer, when he made Splash (1984). Darryl Hannah co-starred as the mermaid who falls for a NewYork greengrocer, a role that had been linked with Jeff Bridges, Chevy Chase, Richard Gere, Dudley Moore, Michael Keaton, Kevin Kline, Bill Murray, and John Travolta before Howard gave Hanks his big break by offering him the lead rather than the supporting role of the wisecracking brother that went to John Candy.

Steven Spielberg was an instant admirer. 'When audiences saw him in Splash,' he said, 'they wanted to adopt him. The women wanted their daughters to marry him, and the families wanted him to come have supper with them.' But Hanks has no intention of becoming a clean-cut pin-up and accepted the more risqué role of Rick Gassko in Neal Israel's Bachelor Party (1984), which follows the efforts of a Catholic bus driver's pals to lead him off the straight and narrow before his wedding.

While this became a laddish favourite, Stan Dragoti's The Man With One Red Shoe (1985) failed to find favour, in spite of the fact that it had been inspired by Yves Robert's hit French comedy, The Tall Blond Man With One Black Shoe (1972). Hanks gave it the full college try, as concert violinist Richard Drew becomes caught up in a spy caper. But Alfred Hitchcock's North By Northwest (1959) it wasn't.

A reunion with John Candy in Nicholas Meyer's Volunteers (1985) also drew mixed reviews, as poor little rich boy Lawrence Whatley Bourne III escapes his creditors by hopping on a Peace Corps flight to Thailand. The picture proved life-changing, however, as Hanks was cast opposite Rita Wilson, whom he had met briefly while making Bosom Buddies. He had been married since 1978 to actress Samantha Lewes, with whom he had two children, Colin and Elizabeth. But he retained close ties with them after marrying Wilson in 1988 and having two more sons, Chester and Truman.

Two years previously, Hanks had found himself on the Cary Grant trail again, when he played Walter Fielding, Jr. opposite Shelley Long in Richard Benjamin's The Money Pit. This contained more than the odd echo of Howard Hawks's Mr Blandings Builds His Dream House (1948), in which Grant had been teamed with Myrna Loy. However, Hanks next sought to stretch himself with a couple of dramas, Moshé Mizrahi's little-seen Every Time We Say Goodbye, and Garry Marshall's Nothing in Common and (all 1986).

The former cast Hanks as an American airman in the RAF who falls for a Jewish woman in mandatory Palestine during the Second World War. It remains the lowest-grossing film of Hanks's career and is pretty difficult to track down. By contrast, the latter proved to be a turning point, as he played David Basner, an ad exec who is too self-absorbed to process the fact that his parents (Jackie Gleason and Eva Marie Saint) have separated after 36 years of marriage. He has since credited the dramedy with changing 'my desires about working in movies'. Up to that point, he had been so grateful to be succeeding in a notoriously difficult business that he had said, 'Let me do those second-rate Bill Murray films, I'll do them 'til the cows come home.' By focussing on relationships rather than situations, however, Nothing in Common shifted his perspective.

He was still committed to co-star with Dan Aykroyd, as Detective Pep Streebek, in Tom Mankiewicz's Dragnet (1987), which sought to put a comic spin on Jack Webb's classic 1950s crime series of the same name. But he edged towards his new direction with David Seltzer's Punchline (1988), which saw medical student-cum-comic Steven Gold help a housewife fulfil her ambition to do stand-up. Co-star Sally Field sensed that Hanks was at a crossroads. 'You know, underneath there's somebody else,' she said about his desire to change his image. 'Somebody dark. And it's a man. Not a boy, but a man who I sense has a lot of anger in there. And he doesn't feel he has to hide that on the screen; he just hides it when he's not on screen.'

Ironically, the film that allowed Hanks to channel this ambition to be regarded as an actor rather than a comedian was about an adolescent boy whose eagerness to grow up transforms him into a thirtysomething. When Steven Spielberg was attached to Big (1988), he had planned to cast Harrison Ford as Josh Baskin. Following his departure to make Empire of the Sun (1987), however, Kevin Costner, Steve Guttenberg, Warren Beatty, Dennis Quaid, Albert Brooks, and Matthew Modine all turned down a role that was coveted by John Travolta, Sean Penn, Gary Busey, and Andy García. Debra Winger even tried to persuade director Penny Marshall to rework the project so she could star. But Marshall was all set to go with Robert De Niro when a scheduling issue caused him to drop out and Hanks just happened to be next in line.

Such was the maturity of his performance as a tweenager trapped inside a man's body that Hanks received an Oscar nomination for Best Actor. He may have lost out to Dustin Hoffman in Barry Levinson's Rain Man (1988), but he had proved his point. Things don't change overnight in Hollywood, however, and Hanks's next two pictures were comedies.

In Joe Dante's The 'Burbs, Hanks played Joe Peterson, who becomes convinced that his suburban neighbours are serial killers. Trading on his everyman persona, Hanks demonstrated the difference between acting funny and funny acting and gave a reprise as Cypress Beach cop Scott Turner in Roger Spottiswoode's Turner & Hooch (both 1989), in which he defied the maxim about not acting with children or animals by forming a memorable double act with a sizeable Dogue de Bordeaux named Beasley.

While the latter romp did decent business, Dante's dark comedy misfired and the same fate befell John Patrick Shanley's Joe Versus the Volcano, which teamed Hanks for the first time with Meg Ryan. But, while he suited the role of a man who believes he is dying of a 'brain cloud', he was wholly miscast as Sherman McCoy, the callous Wall Street bond trader who strays into the South Bronx in Brian De Palma's notoriously ill-conceived adaptation of Tom Wolfe's bestseller, The Bonfire of the Vanities (both 1990).

Original director Mike Nichols had wanted Steve Martin for the role, but Warner Bros were as unconvinced as they were with Wolfe's suggestion of Chevy Chase. Kevin Costner, Christopher Reeve, and Tom Cruise were all considered before Hanks prevailed. With Julie Salamon's 1991 book, The Devil's Candy: The Bonfire of the Vanities Goes to Hollywood, dishing the dirt on the film's production, this could easily have derailed Hanks's change of direction. But, following a two-year break, he returned more determined than ever to keep his reinvention on track.

Less Pretentiously Fake

While pondering his future, Hanks directed the 'None But the Lonely Heart' episode of the horror series, Tales From the Crypt (1992), in which he also took a cameo. But he had set himself a goal of playing roles that were 'less pretentiously fake and over the top'. As he told one interviewer, 'I'm not going to play guys who can't figure out what's going on. Or are in the middle of something that's bigger than them and fell into it by accident.'

The first role of this new era was unkempt coach Jimmy Dugan, who manages the Rockford Peaches wartime baseball team in Penny Marshall's A League of Their Own. Key to this reformation was a 53-second pee that told audiences to expect something more from Hanks than affable average Joes. Just as important, however, was his decision to distance himself from a Super Mario movie and deft cameo as Mike the narrator in Richard Donner's 1960s rite of passage, Radio Flyer (both 1992). Most crucially, Hanks signed up for a reunion with Meg Ryan on Nora Ephron's Sleepless in Seattle (1993).

A variation on Leo McCarey's Cary Grant-Deborah Kerr vehicle, An Affair to Remember (1957), the story of widowed architect Sam Baldwin's tentative relationship with journalist Annie Reed melted hearts and demonstrated that Hanks could handle romantic leads. Moreover, it earned him a Golden Globe nomination. But he would go one better by winning the Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance as Andrew Beckett in Jonathan Demme's Philadelphia (1993), which required him to lose 35lbs and thin his hair.

Having defended his choices in Jeffrey Friedman and Rob Epstein's documentary, The Celluloid Closet (1995), Hanks now admits that he wouldn't be cast as a gay man fighting a discrimination case for unfair dismissal after contracting AIDS. At the time, however, when the disease was causing panic and prejudice, Hanks was able to use his trusted screen persona to remind audiences that those diagnosed HIV+ remained people in need of care and compassion. A similar theme emerged, among many others, in his follow-up feature, Robert Zemeckis's Forrest Gump (1994). Having been intrigued by Eric Roth's script for what would become Kevin Costner's The Postman (1997), Hanks contacted the writer about adapting Winston Groom's novel about how an Alabama man with an IQ of 75 negotiated life from the mid-1950s.

Recognising that this was one of those 'grand, hopeful movies that the audience can go to and feel some hope for their lot and their position in life', Hanks became so committed to the project that when Paramount baulked at the expense of the effects in the cross-country run sequence that Hanks and Zemeckis split the cost themselves. So, when the film ended up taking $600 million, Hanks landed a windfall of $65 million from the profits. Moreover, Forrest earned him a second Oscar for Best Actor and, by a curious coincidence, he was exactly the same age that Spencer Tracy (37/38) had been when he achieved the feat for Victor Fleming's Captains Courageous (1937) and Norman Taurog's Boys Town (1938).

Tracy didn't receive a third consecutive nomination, but Hanks did. He lost out to Nicolas Cage for Mike Figgis's Leaving Las Vegas, but he excelled as astronaut Jim Lovell in Ron Howard's Apollo 13, which grippingly recreated the effort to bring an aborted moonshot safely back to Earth. Kevin Costner had turned down the role and Paul Newman, Robin Williams, and Clint Eastwood were all linked with voicing the drawstring sheriff in John Lasseter's Toy Story (all 1995). But, after three sequels and a couple of specials - Toy Story 2 (1999), Toy Story 3 (2010), Toy Story of Terror (2013), Toy Story That Time Forgot (2014), and Toy Story 4 (2019) - it's impossible to think of anyone else but Hanks as Woody.

After a hectic period of on-screen activity, Hanks scaled back by taking the supporting role of Mr White in That Thing You Do! (1996), a 1960s music saga about a pop group called The Oneders that marked Hanks's debut as a writer-director. He also formed the Playtone production company with Gary Goetzman and launched the enterprise with the 12-part HBO docudrama, From the Earth to the Moon (1998), which chronicled the Apollo space programme. Hanks directed the first episode and wrote four more. He also guested as the assistant of Georges Méliès (Tchéky Karyo) in a segment on the making of the pioneering sci-fi outing, A Trip to the Moon (1902).

Hanks and co-producers Ron Howard and Brian Grazer would share an Emmy for Outstanding Miniseries. But his discussions with Martin Scorsese over a biopic about Dean Martin came to nought and he had misgivings about playing Captain John H. Miller in Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan (1998). However, his interest in the Second World War convinced him to front the D-Day epic and undertake rigorous boot camp training with US Marine Corps captain, Dale Dye. He was rewarded with another Oscar nomination, while Spielberg won the award for Best Director, although John Madden's Shakespeare in Love was improbably deemed to be Best Picture.

Unable to resist a third teaming with Meg Ryan, Hanks played Joe Fox in Nora Ephron's You've Got Mail (1998), an updating of the Ernst Lubitsch classic, The Shop Around the Corner (1940), which had paired James Stewart and Margaret Sullavan. Despite the romcom's screwball edge, audiences melted once more and tissues proved equally necessary, as Hanks essayed Depression era death row guard Paul Edgecomb in Frank Darabont's adaptation of the Stephen King bestseller, The Green Mile (1999). In just six years, Hanks had gone from being a likeable lightweight to being Hollywood's go to dramatic actor. But staying on top would provide its own challenges.

The Three Es

It was business as usual for Tom Hanks, as the new millennium dawned and he received his fourth Academy Award nomination for Best Actor. Rather astonishingly, he hasn't been recognised in the category since, as Hollywood has spent the last two decades taking his relaxed acting style for granted. He gained and shed over 50lbs to play FedEx systems analyst Chuck Noland in Robert Zemeckis's Cast Away (2000), whose sole companion on a South Pacific island following a plane crash is a volleyball he names Wilson.

Hanks followed his Golden Globe win for Best Actor with an Emmy for Outstanding Directing for a Miniseries, Movie or a Dramatic Special after he helmed the 'Crossroads' episode of Band of Brothers (2001). Co-produced by Steven Spielberg, this 10-part series charts the wartime exploits of the 506th Regiment of the 101st Airborne Division from a Georgia boot camp to the Normandy beaches. It couldn't be more different, therefore, from Hanks's other 2001 triumph, as he teamed with wife Rita Wilson (who is of Greek descent) to produce Joel Zwick's My Big Fat Greek Wedding, which was written by its overnight star, Nia Vardalos. Indeed, they would join forces with her again on Michael Lembeck's Connie and Carla (2004), which co-starred Toni Collette.

During a 2001 interview with Oprah Winfrey, Hanks revealed that he selected projects on the basis of 'the three Es', so that his films entertained, educated, and enlightened the audience. However, his choices didn't always excite viewers by taking them to places they had never been before in his company. Half a century earlier, James Stewart had risked his 'aw shucks' persona by making revisionist Westerns with Anthony Mann and brooding thrillers with Alfred Hitchcock. Cary Grant had also revealed a darker side in working with Hitch. Yet, Hanks seemed reluctant to jeopardise his hard-won 'nice guy' image playing an out-and-out baddie.

Even when he essayed 1930s mob enforcer Michael Sullivan in Sam Mendes's take on Max Allan Collins and Richard Piers Rayner's DC Comics graphic novel, Road to Perdition, he took the curse off his crimes by being a doting father to his frightened son, (played by Tyler Hoechlin). Similarly, he tempered the anti-heroic pursuit of Frank Abagnale, Jr. (Leonard DiCaprio) by FBI agent Carl Hanratty in Steven Spielberg's true-life caper, Catch Me If You Can (both 2002). Doing what was expected clearly paid dividends, however, as, between productions, the 45 year-old became the youngest-ever recipient of the American Film Institute's Life Achievement Award.

After two years away from the screen, Hanks appeared in four features in 2004. He raised eyebrows with his performance as Professor G.H. Dor in Joel and Ethan Coen's The Ladykillers, which missed its step significantly in seeking to recreate the bleak humour of Alexander Mackendrick's 1955 Ealing comedy of the same name. But he was back on 'good old Tom' form as Viktor Navorski, an Eastern European trapped in New York's John F. Kennedy Airport in The Terminal, which Steven Spielberg made because he wanted to direct a film 'that could make us laugh and cry and feel good about the world'.

Following a guest slot as a Presley impersonator in Joel Zwick's Elvis Has Left the Building, Hanks teamed again with Robert Zemeckis on The Polar Express (both 2004). Based on Chris Van Allsburg's popular picture book, this festive flight of fancy made groundbreaking use of motion-capture technology to enable Hanks to play The Conductor, Hero Boy, the Boy's Father, the Hobo, and Santa Claus. Thanks to a limited IMAX release, this would be Hanks's first 3-D feature. But he's not made another since, although Woody's latter two adventures were stereoscopic, as was Mark Cowen's IMAX featurette, Magnificent Desolation: Walking on the Moon (2005), which Hanks co-wrote, co-produced, and narrated.

Hanks contented himself with starting 2006 with a couple of animations, as he voiced Woody Car in John Lasseter's Cars and co-produced John A. Davis's The Ant Bully. A recording of his voice could also be heard in Chris Paine's documentary, Who Killed the Electric Car?, while a clip from He Knows You're Alone was included in Jeff McQueen's documentary, Going to Pieces: The Rise Fall and Rise of the Slasher Film. There's even archival footage of Hanks in Stephen Frears's The Queen !

Further producing duties followed on Tom Vaughan's University Challenge comedy, Starter For Ten (2006), while Hanks also exec produced Tom Shadyac's Evan Almighty and joined the voice cast (as newspaper columnist Al McIntosh) of Ken Burns and Lynn Novick's seven-part documentary series, The War (both 2007). However, Hanks returned to acting as symbologist Robert Langdon in Ron Howard's adaptation of Dan Brown's runaway bestseller, The Da Vinci Code (2006). Critics lambasted the thriller, which co-starred Audrey Tautou, and Hanks has since conceded that a film that grossed $750 million worldwide was 'hooey'. Reviewers were even ruder about its sequels, Angels & Demons (2009) and Inferno (2016). But they each earned Hanks a reported record salary of over $25 million. Of course, Cinema Paradiso would recommend that you see them all.

At the end of 2006, Hanks topped Forbes magazine's 1500-strong list of the 'most trusted celebrities' and he reinforced his status with an amusing cameo as himself in David Silverman's The Simpsons Movie, in which he delivered the immortal line, 'Hello, I'm Tom Hanks. The US government has lost its credibility so it's borrowing some of mine.' He remained in the political realm for Mike Nichols's Charlie Wilson's War (both 2007), which was scripted by Aaron Sorkin from George Crile III's book about the efforts of a US Congressman to gain state support for the mujahideen during the decade-long Soviet-Afghan conflict. Hanks picked up a Golden Globe nomination for his performance, while co-star Philip Seymour Hoffman drew a Best Supporting nod at the Oscars.

Persuaded against joining the ensemble of Phyllida Lloyd's Mamma Mia! ('my singing voice would have scared the children'), Hanks nevertheless enjoyed serving as an executive producer on the picture. Indeed, he spent much of 2008 wearing his producer's hat, as he followed Gil Kenan's fantasy, City of Ember, with Tom Hooper's seven-part historical masterpiece, John Adams, which featured a career-best performance from Paul Giamatti in winning four Golden Globes and a record-breaking 13 Emmys. Hanks also produced Spike Jonze's adaptation of Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are and exec produced his third collaboration with Nia Vardalos, Donald Petrie's My Life in Ruins (both 2009).

The eagle-eyed will spot Hanks's Oscar-winning Philadelphia performance on Tilda Swinton's television set in Luca Guadagnino's I Am Love (2009). But sightings were becoming increasingly rare, despite him readily agreeing to play son Colin's father in Sean McGinly's dramedy, The Great Buck Howard (2008). Annoyingly for Cinema Paradiso users, however, it's not currently available on disc.

Hanks For the Memory

In addition to guesting in the 100th episode of 30 Rock and cropping up fleetingly in Alex Stapleton's documentary, Corman's World: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel, Hanks also returned to the Second World War for The Pacific (all 2010), a fictional account of the US campaign from Guadalcanal to Okinawa that he executive produced with Steven Spielberg. He also directed himself and Julia Roberts in Larry Crowne (2011), a romantic comedy co-written by Nia Vardalos that drew on Hanks's time at Chabot College for its story about a middle-aged Navy veteran who returns to education after losing his job.

A reunion with screenwriter Eric Roth followed on Stephen Daldry's Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2011), in which Hanks plays Thomas Schell, the father of autistic nine year-old Oskar (Thomas Horn), who follows the clues to the whereabouts of New York's lost sixth borough that Thomas had left after he was killed on 9/11. The same year also saw Hanks voice journalist Roy Ormstead in Ken Burns and Lynn Novick's three-part documentary, Prohibition, and join the chorus of appreciation in Susan Lacy's King of Hollywood: Inventing David Geffen (all 2011). On a personal note, Hanks was also honoured by NASA alongside three-time co-star Meg Ryan in having the asteroids 12818 Tomhanks and 8353 Megryan named after them.

Amidst calls for Hanks to take more creative risks, he signed up to play six roles in Cloud Atlas (2012), an adaptation of David Mitchell's novel that was co-directed by the Wachowskis and Tom Tykwer. With episodes set on the Chatham Islands in 1849, Cambridge and Edinburgh in 1936, San Francisco in 1973, London in 2012, Neo Seoul in 2144, and Big Island in 2321, this expensive indie enterprise divided audiences and critics alike. But Hanks remains a true believer in a film was made 'on a hope and a dream and nothing but a circle of love' and which so 'altered my entire consciousness' that it became 'the only movie I've been in that I've seen more than twice'.

Another Emmy for Outstanding Miniseries followed, when Hanks exec'd Game Change (2012), Jay Roach's lowdown on Senator John McCain's 2008 bid for the White House. He stuck with the presidency, as the producer of Peter Landesman's Parkland (2013), which recreated events after the assassination of John F. Kennedy in Dallas in November 1963. The year brought two more factual pictures, as Hanks took the title role in Paul Greengrass's Somali pirates saga, Captain Phillips, and played Walt Disney opposite Emma Thompson's Pamela L. Travers in Saving Mr Banks, John Lee Hancock's account of the making of Robert Stevenson's children's classic, Mary Poppins (1964).

Hanks's performance as Richard Phillips earned him Best Actor nominations at the Golden Globes and the BAFTAs. But he was overlooked by the Academy, despite being the first actor to play Disney in a mainstream feature. He refused to brood or sit on his laurels, however. Having created the 2012 animated web series, Electric City (in which he voiced the character of Cleveland Carr), Hanks made his Broadway bow in Nora Ephron's Lucky Guy (2013), which brought him a Tony nomination. In 2014, he had a short story, 'Alan Bean Plus Four', published in The New Yorker. Despite its links to the Apollo programme, Hanks declined an invitation to go into space alongside Amazon founder, Jeff Bezos. As he told talk show host Jimmy Kimmel, 'I'm doing good - but I ain't paying $28 million.'

Having teamed again with Playtone partner Gary Goetzman to produce the 10-part series, The Sixties (2014), Hanks was coaxed back on to the big screen by Steven Spielberg for the Coen-scripted Cold War drama, Bridge of Spies. He plays insurance lawyer James B. Donovan during the delicate negotiations with the Soviet Union for the exchange of U2 pilot, Gary Powers (Austin Stowell) and KGB agent, Rudolf Abel (Mark Rylance). But he was snubbed again during awards season, as he reunited with Meg Ryan to play Matthew Macauley in Ithaca (both 2015), a reworking of William Sayoyan's The Human Comedy that Ryan directed.

The year ended with another outstanding mini-series, as Hanks produced Lisa Cholodenko's four-part adaptation of Elizabeth Strout's Olive Kitteridge (2015), which won eight Primetime Emmys, including acting awards for Frances McDormand, Richard Jenkins, and Bill Murray. And Hanks started 2016 with two more producing credit, as Kirk Jones's My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2 was followed by Tom Tykwer's take on Dave Eggers's A Hologram For a King, in which Hanks also played Alan Clay, a struggling salesman who is sent to pitch a holographic teleconferencing system to the King of Saudi Arabia.

Having indulged himself (as the owner of over 250 typewriters) with an appearance in Doug Nichol's documentary, California Typewriter, Hanks took the role of Captain Chesley Sullenberger in Clint Eastwood's Sully (both 2016), which recreated the 2009 emergency landing of a stricken US Airways jet on the Hudson River. Despite his fine performance, Hanks was again excluded from the annual Best Actor ballots, although compensation came in the form of the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Barack Obama and the rank of Chevalier in the French Legion of Honour.

Sadly, we're unable to bring you Hanks's teaming with Emma Watson in James Ponsoldt's techno-thriller, The Circle. But Cinema Paradiso can offer Peter Landesman's Mark Felt (both 2017), which Hanks produced and which stars Liam Neeson as the anonymous source who helped bring down President Richard Nixon. In Alan J. Pakula's All the President's Men (1976), the role of 'Deep Throat' was taken by Hal Holbrook, while Jason Robards won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for his work as Washington Post editor, Ben Bradlee.

Hanks landed the same role in Steven Spielberg's The Post (2017), a recreation of the Pentagon Papers scandal that co-starred Meryl Streep as publisher Kathleen Graham. But, while she received her 17th Best Actress nomination at the Oscars, Hanks was frozen out again. There were even think pieces in certain quarters of the media that he had starred in so many meticulously made. morally upright middlebrow movies that he had become overly associated with a gentler form of the 'white male righteousness and paternalism' that was consistently being decried on social media.

Still resisting the temptation to join in the on-screen fun, Hanks settled for a producer's berth on Ol Parker's Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again (2018). But he found himself back in the fold when he received his first Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor for his performance as Fred Rogers in Marielle Heller's A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (2019). Later that year, he returned to showbiz history as the producer of The Movies, a six-part chronicle of Hollywood since the silent era.

He then became a bit elusive, as far as Cinema Paradiso users are concerned, as neither his cameo as himself in Jason Woliner's Borat Subsequent Film nor his turns as Commander Ernest Krause in Aaron Schneider's Greyhound, as Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd in Paul Greengrass's News of the World (all 2020), as Finch Weinberg in Miguel Sapochnik's Finch (2021), and as Geppetto in Robert Zemeckis's Pinocchio (2022) has been made available on disc. This is a shame, as the roles (particularly in Greengrass's Western) demonstrate a keenness to avoid becoming typecast. Moreover, the Golden Raspberry nomination for Worst Actor that Hanks receieved for Pinocchio makes it all the more tantalising.

Hanks can be seen, however, guesting as General George Meade in an episode of the Yellowstone spin-off, 1883 (2021-). His bold display as Colonel Tom Parker opposite Golden Globe winner Austin Butler in Baz Luhrmann's Elvis (2022) is also well worth seeing. Once again, awards kudos has not come Hanks's way (if you discount a Razzie nomination for Worst Supporting Actor and Worst Screen Couple for His Latex-Laden Face and Ludicrous Accent). But he did pick up the Cecil B. DeMille Award at the Golden Globes in 2020. Moreover, he remains busy, with a third wartime series with Steven Spielberg, entitled Masters of the Air, being well under way, while he has also been announced alongside Rita Wilson in the all-star cast for Wes Anderson's forthcoming comedy, Asteroid City (2023).

Further down the line, expect to see him line up in In the Garden of Beasts, Joe Wright's biopic of American diplomat William Dodd, and Robert Zemeckis's adaptation of Richard McGuire's graphic novel, Here. But he still has ambitions to feature in a comic-book caper. Despite having being ordained a minister in 2015, Hanks has often expressed a desire to play the villain in a superhero movie. So, what are the bods at DC and Marvel waiting for?