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TOM HANKS
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Born in Concord, California on July 9, 1956 Thomas J. Hanks was the third of four children of Amos and Janet Hanks. His parents divorced when young Tom was 5 years old. He is quoted as saying, "By the time I was 10, I had had 3 mothers, 5 grammar schools and 10 houses." This after a childhood spent moving with his father, Amos, from one job and marriage to the next. Tom was raised by his father along with siblings Sandra (born in 1951) and Lawrence (Larry - born in 1953). Tom's younger brother, James (Jim - born in 1961), was raised by their mother and grew up separated from the other Hanks children for the first several years of his life. Tom Hanks' father married twice more after divorcing Tom's mother and moved often until settling down in 1966. With a new job and a new marriage (bringing with it a new mother and new siblings for the Hanks children to deal with) Amos Hanks set up house in Oakland, California. There young Tom was able to stay, attending both junior high and high school without another move to a new school. His years in Oakland saw Tom Hanks develop into a young man. His interests were normal for the time; space (his heroes were astronauts) and sports, especially baseball. It was here that his talent for comedy (becoming "the loud one" was the way Tom found he could be noticed, fitting in with seemingly ever changing stepfamilies and new school crowds) was first noticed. He was dubbed "Class Cutup" in the Skyline High School Yearbook. While at Skyline High, Tom ran track and played on the soccer team, attended his first major league baseball game and discovered drama. It wasn't until Tom watched a friend perform in the school's production of Dracula that Tom Hanks thought about acting. After seeing the play Tom joined the Thespian Club, worked as stage manager for the school's production of My Fair Lady, won performing roles in the productions of Night of the Iguana, Twelfth Night and South Pacific, and won Skyline's highest acting award - Best Actor - for his portrayal of Luther Billis in South Pacific. This first acting award was earned by Tom in 1974, twenty years before his talent would garner his first Oscar. By the time Skyline awarded Tom their version of the Oscar he was a senior preparing to graduate from high school and acting had become a major interest. After high school and with acting and theater still a big part of his life, Tom Hanks attended Cabot College in nearby Hayward, California from 1974 to 1976. During his time at Cabot College he "allowed" himself one drama class per quarter. It was during one of these drama classes that Tom went to see the Berkeley Repertory Company production of The Iceman Cometh to fulfill a course requirement. The performance of Joe Spano (American Graffiti, Hill Street Blues, Apollo 13, From the Earth to the Moon) as Rocky in the production fired a desire in Tom to be "as good as he (Spano)" was. Acting had moved from an interest to a professional career choice for Tom Hanks. After his two years at Cabot College, Tom transferred to California State University at Sacramento. While at Cal State Tom worked building sets for the university productions and met Susan Dillingham who would later take on her stage name - Samantha Lewes - and become Tom Hanks' first wife. Also while at Cal State, Tom auditioned for a local theater production of The Cherry Orchard. He won the role of Yasha and so impressed the director, Vincent Dowling - the artistic director of the Great Lakes Shakespeare Festival - then doing some off season work in Sacramento, that Dowling asked Tom to return with him to Cleveland, Ohio at the start of the Festival's next season to intern with the company. 1977 saw a move to Cleveland and the end of college for Tom Hanks. He began work as an intern for the Great Lakes Shakespeare Festival that spring. He was working with professional actors for the first time. It was during his first season with the company that Tom won the role of Gremio in the production of The Taming of the Shrew. That role earned Hanks his Actor's Equity card and the right to earn $210 a week for working as an actor. Not only did he work with professional actors, now he was being paid to act as well. Later that summer Samantha Lewes joined Tom in Cleveland. They moved in together and began a new life of theater and acting. Since the tour of the company went on until December of 1977, Tom Hanks missed the fall semester at Cal State. He never went back to college, choosing instead to pursue acting in the theater. Between seasons with the Great Lakes Shakespeare Festival, Tom worked at the Civic Theater in Sacramento building sets, rigging lights and running shows. When he returned to Cleveland in the summer of 1978 for the next season of the Festival he won the role of Proteus in the production of Two Gentlemen from Verona. That performance garnered Hanks the Cleveland Critics Circle Best Actor Award. At the end of the 1978 season in Cleveland, Tom and Samantha headed for New York armed with little but his acting award and a desire to break into the big time. Now 22 years old, Tom Hanks lived in Hell's Kitchen and married Samantha who had given birth to Tom's first son, Colin. Work as a performer in New York was practically non-existent sending Tom back to Cleveland in the spring of 1979 for his final season with the Great Lakes Shakespeare Festival. There he played Harold Pinter in Do Me a Favorite and Bottom in A Midsummer Night's Dream. It was the last season Tom would work in Cleveland. Of Hanks' work with the Festival, Vincent Dowling has said, "He was the best Shakespearean clown I ever knew, because he was seriously real and seriously funny at the same time." Back in New York in late 1979, Tom auditioned for the Riverside Shakespeare Theater production of The Mandrake and won the lead role of Callimaco. He also took on a manager, Joe Ohla with the J. Michael Bloom Agency in Los Angeles. The agency got Tom his first film role in He Knows You're Alone for the Screen Actors Guild minimum pay rate of $785 a week. The film was released in 1980 by MGM but received poor reviews and poorer box office. Although not a stellar production, Tom's first effort in film earned him a Screen Actors Guild card. In January 1980, ABC Television began a Talent Development Program designed to discover and develop new talent for the network. Tom attended multiple auditions, surviving cut after cut in the program and wowing Jan McCormack and Joyce Selznick. They gave Tom, now 23 years old, a $50,000 contract and a chance to audition for the pilot of Bosom Buddies. Tom Hanks won the role of Kip Wilson and began his new television career at ABC in the fall season of 1980 earning $5,000 an episode. Tom moved his family to the San Fernando Valley in California. Bosom Buddies ran for two seasons and 37 episodes. It was cancelled in 1982. That year saw the birth of Samantha and Tom's second child, Elizabeth, and guest television roles for Tom on Happy Days, Family Ties, The Love Boat, and Taxi. He also made a television movie, Rona Jaffe's Mazes and Monsters. Work became harder and harder to find but Tom's performance on Happy Days brought him an unexpected opportunity. In 1982, Ron Howard was developing a new film for Touchstone Pictures, a new division of Disney, and was looking to cast the lead role. Howard remembered Tom Hanks from his guest shot on Happy Days after having difficulty with casting the male lead for the movie Splash. He gave the role in the $9 million dollar production to Tom and with it a chance for Hanks to make a name for himself on the big screen. Production began in 1983. Splash was released in January 1984 to good reviews and great box office and things for Tom Hanks began to change significantly. Instead of sparse guest roles on television, Tom Hanks was now a hot actor who had proved he could make a big budget film that would succeed. He had a new manager with the famous William Morris Agency and was getting noticed in Hollywood. His next film was another box office success, Bachelor Party, released in late 1984. Remembering lean times in New York and with a home and family to provide for, Tom Hanks began work on six films over the next four years. The work schedule was grueling and kept him away from home where his marriage with Samantha Lewes was becoming increasingly strained. In 1985 he filmed The Man With One Red Shoe, Volunteers, and The Money Pit. On the set of Volunteers, he met Rita Wilson. Tom's friendship with Rita would develop into much more after 1988 but at that time provided a respite from the hustle of an active career and the hassle of an unhappy home life. Tom was quoted as saying, "My marriage had all but fallen apart when I met Rita but I was still determined to try and make it work. I didn't want my children to go through what I'd gone through as a youngster." In an attempt to support his wife and perhaps save his marriage, Tom spent time early in 1985 producing, directing and even building the sets for a small play by Steve Tesich called The Passing Game at the Gene Dynarski Theater. Samantha co-produced and performed in the play. The marriage didn't survive and by the end of 1985 the couple had separated. The next year, 1986, brought an opportunity for Tom to do a film that hit very close to his roots. Nothing in Common, a film about a son who deals with the divorce of his parents while caring for an ailing father, had real personal meaning for Tom Hanks whose own father was suffering from kidney failure. Amos Hanks was undergoing kidney dialysis several times a week and would eventually undergo two failed kidney transplants. That same year Tom earned his first $1 million paycheck for a film role when he went to Israel to make Every Time We Say Goodbye. The film was a critical disappointment but proved that Tom Hanks could be a romantic leading man in a serious drama. The following year Tom made Dragnet, a commercial success but another critical disappointment. 1987 saw him move out of his San Fernando home, the finalization of his divorce from Samantha Lewes and the end of a string of roles that were mostly critically unsuccessful. With the end of that year, Tom Hanks would ask Rita Wilson to marry him and would make a conscious decision to change his life and career. Tom and Rita married in 1988 on April 30th. That same year saw him stretch himself in a drama, Punchline, and get his first brush with Oscar gold for Big. Tom credits Sally Fields, his co-star in Punchline, with helping him learn about making better choices. To prepare for the role of Steve Gold in Punchline, an on the edge stand-up comedian struggling with personal demons, Tom worked out stand-up routines at local LA comedy clubs in order to lend credibility and accuracy to the portrayal. That work ethic would be a lasting part of Tom Hanks' work from that point on in his career. It was a role Tom "went out and tried to get" in part because it was dark and full of anger, emotions that Tom Hanks understood. It was a role others didn't believe he could pull off. They would be surprised. Ron Bass, the screenwriter and one of the early doubters had changed his mind after seeing Tom's performance. Bass is quoted as saying, "He (Hanks) is an actor. He can make you not like him because he's that fine an actor." His first blockbuster hit came with the release of Big, a film that grossed over $100 million in American box office. The film was directed by Penny Marshall, who cast Tom as the boy in a man's body Josh Baskin. Marshall wanted Tom as her first choice for the role and was willing to wait for the completion of Punchline to get him, passing over the likes of Harrison Ford and Robert De Niro. That decision and a wonderful, whimsical performance netted Tom his first Best Actor Oscar nomination in 1989. His next three roles would prove to be less successful but filled with his own particular brand of comedic genius. 1989 saw the release of The 'Burbs, Turner & Hooch, and Joe Versus the Volcano. That same year, in a departure from comedy, Tom accepted the role of Sherman McCoy in the much anticipate but critically disastrous The Bonfire of the Vanities. After the disappointment of an unsuccessful 1989, Tom decided to take a break from filmmaking. His first wife had reverted to her maiden name, Susan Dillingham, and retained custody of Tom Hanks' first two children. She moved with the children back to the Sacramento area and even though Tom had begun a new marriage he remained an active part of his children's lives. His family continued to grow with the birth of Hanks and Wilson's first child, Chester, in August of 1990. Hanks' only project in the first two years of the 1990's was an uncredited roll in Radio Flyer, a movie about a boy who escapes from an abusive home with the help of his older brother. The film was released in 1991. The decision to return to films brought with it a new management company, Mike Ovitz's Creative Artists Agency, and the choice to return to the successful direction of Penny Marshall. Tom Hanks won the role of Jimmy Dugan, a drunk and down and out baseball manager, in A League of Their Own. The 1992 film was the first role he asked to play since beginning his hiatus in 1990 and a part he really felt strongly about portraying. He had initially turned the role down while still with William Morris but had been encouraged to take the role by his new manager. (In a move that has become typical of Hanks' integrity, he gave half the agent's fee to William Morris.) 1992 also marked a sad point in Tom's life when his father died after a long battle with kidney failure. The release of A League of Their Own began what has been a non-stop string of wonderfully crafted and successful films. 1993 saw the release of Sleepless in Seattle, Tom's first collaboration with Nora Ephron and his second film with Meg Ryan, and Philadelphia, the film that would earn him his second Oscar nomination for Best Actor. That year also saw Tom branch out from acting and take a stab at directing. He directed and performed in an episode of Fallen Angels for Showtime and directed an episode of HBO's series Tales From the Crypt. He would also direct an episode of A League of Their Own, a short-lived television series that followed the feature film success. What followed would be nothing less than legendary. Tom Hanks went on to win the Best Actor Oscar for his portrayal of Andrew Beckett, an attorney suffering from AIDS, in Philadelphia in 1994. That same year he filmed Forrest Gump, Toy Story (doing a voiceover performance as Woody for the animated feature) and Apollo 13 (his second collaboration with Ron Howard). The role of Forrest Gump would bring another Oscar nomination for Best Actor and his role of Jim Lovell, NASA astronaut, in Apollo 13 allowed him to return to his childhood passion for space. Forrest Gump was released in 1994. In 1995, Tom Hanks became only the second man to win back to back Best Actor Oscars (Spencer Tracy being the first to do so) taking home his second gold trophy for Forrest Gump. That same year Toy Story was released and Tom was interviewed for the feature documentary The Celluloid Closet. 1995 also brought Tom Hanks an unusual and historic honor. That year he was named the Hasty Pudding "Man of the Year" by the Harvard Lampoon. To round out 1995, the fourth of Tom's children, Truman, was born the day after Christmas. The busy year of 1996 saw the release of Apollo 13 and the production of Tom's first feature directorial effort. That Thing You Do! was written and directed by Tom Hanks and grew out of his love for music and his fascination with the one hit wonder groups of the 1960's. Tom played the role of Mr. White in the film. Although the film was not a commercial success at the box office it faired well with critics, believed to do so primarily because of Tom Hanks. Taking very little time off, Hanks made two more films the next year and began a new project for HBO that he would produce, direct and perform in. In 1997, Tom traveled to Europe to film the Steven Spielberg war epic Saving Private Ryan. His portrayal of Capt. John Miller would earn Hanks his fourth Best Actor Oscar nomination in 1999. The shoot was grueling but Tom was committed to honoring the WWII veterans who fought the war on the Normandy coast on D-Day. So much so that Tom went to boot camp and along with the seven other actors who would portray an eight man squad sent to find Pvt. James Ryan in the film, endured a week of long marches, little sleep, standard military rations as food, push-ups and the incessant cold. Proving himself the consummate professional and a natural leader, Tom Hanks was instrumental in preventing the mutiny of the other actors from the boot camp experience by convincing them to stay the whole week. Saving Private Ryan was released in the summer of 1998 and became a worldwide phenomenon. In 1998, Tom reteamed with Meg Ryan for the their second collaboration with Nora Ephron in You've Got Mail. The film was released in the fall of 1998 proving once again that Tom Hanks was a master of romantic comedy. To round out the year Tom completed the HBO mini-series From the Earth to the Moon as executive producer, writer (he authored or co-authored four of the series twelve episodes), director and performer. The series won Tom Hanks, as executive producer, the Emmy Award for Best Series of 1998. 1999 has seen Tom make two more films to be released later this year. He plays the role of a prison guard in The Green Mile, an adaptation of the Stephen King serial novel, scheduled for release in December 1999. He also reprised his role as the voice of Woody in Toy Story 2, the first ever animated sequel to see theatrical release, which is slated to hit theaters in November 1999. Whatever he is doing, we can all be assured that great films and projects will be the result. And the best thing about that is that they will be available for all of us to enjoy.
Director
- filmography
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