Hanks, Tom (1956-…), is an American actor who won fame for playing charming, innocent, and likable characters. Hanks began his career as a comic actor, but later expanded it with dramatic roles. He won Academy Awards for best actor for his performances in the motion pictures Philadelphia (1993) and Forrest Gump (1994).
Thomas Jeffrey Hanks was born on July 9, 1956, in Concord, California. He began his acting career in the late 1970’s, appearing first on the stage, and then on television and in movies. He made his film debut in He Knows You’re Alone (1980). His first major success was in the comic fantasy Splash (1984). Hanks played a young boy trapped in a grown man’s body in Big (1988), another comic fantasy. He became an international star in the 1990’s. The romantic comedy Sleepless in Seattle (1993) was one of his most popular films.
Hanks’s other films from the late 1900’s include Nothing in Common (1986), Dragnet (1987), Punchline (1988), Turner and Hooch (1989), A League of Their Own (1992), Apollo 13 (1995), Saving Private Ryan and You’ve Got Mail (both 1998), and The Green Mile (1999). Hanks provided the voice of Woody, the toy cowboy in the popular “Toy Story” series of animated feature films (1995-2019).
In the early 2000’s, Hanks appeared in Cast Away (2000); Road to Perdition and Catch Me If You Can (both 2002); The Terminal and The Polar Express (both 2004); The Da Vinci Code (2006) and its two sequels; Charlie Wilson’s War (2007); Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2011); Cloud Atlas (2012); Captain Phillips and Saving Mr. Banks (both 2013); Bridge of Spies (2015); A Hologram for the King and Sully (both 2016); A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (2019), about the American TV personality Fred Rogers; Greyhound (2020), based on a novel by the English writer Cecil Scott Forester; A Man Called Otto (2022); and Asteroid City (2023), among other films.
In 2013, Hanks starred on Broadway in the Nora Ephron play Lucky Guy. In addition to acting, Hanks has directed television programs and movies. For example, he directed and starred in the motion-picture comedies That Thing You Do! (1996) and Larry Crowne (2011).
Hanks married the American actress Rita Wilson in 1988. In 2014, he became a Kennedy Center honoree. In 2016, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor presented by the president of the United States.
