At the 2020 Golden Globes Gala, Tom Hanks (California, 65) joked with the press about the one thing they have in common in their careers: that they always play good human roles. “My current plan is to go to Australia to work with Baz Luhrmann,” he announced of his signature on the Elvis Presley biopic. “I’m going to play Colonel Tom Parker and shut up all your stupid questions about why I never do anything bad.” Two years later, with the film nearing release (in Spain on June 24), Hanks has an important one Nuance about his character, who is considered a villain in the shadow of the singer’s life: “He’s not evil, he’s just wrong”, explained in an interview with David Marchese in the New York Times that his honesty has made him a lot of talking points these days give to the networks. It seems that even when Tom Hanks flips his image by taking on the role of a manipulator, he ends up emphasizing the character’s most human traits, those with which one can identify.
He’s done that for most of his career. Compared to chameleon actors, he’s an old-fashioned star, one of those celebrities where character and actor are indistinguishable. Those that the public would like to see in a record that has been preserved over time, provided that the actors were exactly as they appeared on screen. John Wayne always represented the same kind of old-fashioned masculinity; Bette Davis was the villain the public loved to hate; Cary Grant, the humble seducer who exuded charm; Katharine Hepburn, the independent woman; James Stewart, the upright neighbor who everyone could identify with.
The one to whom Hanks has been most often compared is James Stewart of all people. Both are the common man, the average man at his most idealistic and positive. The viewer identifies with them, they are what the audience wants to be. Not so well in more cynical times: this impeccable image is viewed with a certain condescension. Patriotism and the desire to tell stories of a particular time, the childhood of the Boomer generation, as reactionary and conservative. Being the ideal son-in-law and father seems less interesting than being an anti-hero.
But in times of moral crisis, the archetypes of “good” and “evil” were once again undermined. Bill Cosby, the father of America, turned out to be a monster. Kevin Spacey, the character actor, a satyr. In contrast, Tom Hanks has a bombproof public image. There are no complaints of “ambiguous behavior” on set, no disgruntled colleagues criticizing him, no economic or moral scandals. He has been married to director Rita Wilson since 1988 and there have been no public shadows in their marriage aside from the fact that one of their four children has become a bit contradictory. It seems that despite everything, Hanks is exactly what he appears to be: a decent bloke, a great actor who knows how to be humble and downplay himself at a time when the honesty and integrity he and his Radiating characters already are not only desirable but subversive.
Tom Hanks in a promotional image taken in 1980 for the ABC series Bosom Buddies (broadcast in Spain under the title Amigos del alma). Walt Disney Television Photo Archives (ABC)
This milestone-filled career was gradually built and defined. He started out as a kid with flaws, very much in the style of 1980s cinema. Today he is a flawless but realistic hero. We take a look back at Tom Hanks’ career through some of his most iconic films and his own words.
Bachelor Party (1984)
With a humility unusual for his profession, he admitted in a 1989 interview in Playboy that his first successes would have been just as successful without him. “I can’t praise the success of Splash and Bachelor Party other than being in the right place at the right time and getting the job.”
Big (1988)
Penny Marshall’s film, about a 13-year-old boy who suddenly begs to grow up and be successful, was her first success with critics and audiences, her first Oscar nomination, and confirmed her as a box-office star capable of ambitious Leading projects (e.g. her role, mixing the names of Harrison Ford or Robert De Niro). In its day, he presented it simply: “It’s a really good film, which I think is really honest and touching on the conscience.”
The Bonfire of the Vanities (1990)
For the film adaptation of Tom Wolfe’s novel, they decided to transform the character Hanks into a nice guy. The result was an intriguing fiasco that podcasts continue to address to this day. Hanks has no mercy on himself: “This is one of the most terrifying movies ever made!” he told Oprah Winfrey. “Everyone was a casting mistake, especially me.”
Tom Hanks at the 1993 Berlin Film Festival promoting Philadelphia, the film that won him his first Oscar. Ronald Siemoneit (Sygma via Getty Images)
Philly (1993)
Hanks earned his first Oscar for playing a lawyer with AIDS, who was fired for it at a time when the disease carried enormous social stigma. In the documentary The Hidden Celluloid (1995), Tom Hanks spoke about the impact that role and film had on perceptions of the disease: “My screen persona was non-threatening. This gay man with AIDS wasn’t scary in part because little Tommy Hanks played the role.” However, he concedes to the New York Times that current circumstances would make this film impossible: “Could a straight man do what I did now in Philadelphia? No, and rightly so. Philadelphia’s goal was not to be scary. One of the reasons people weren’t afraid of this movie was because I played a gay man. We’re over that away and I don’t think people would accept the inauthenticity of a straight man playing a gay man.”
Tawny Owl (1994)
The film, which became a pop artifact, was one of the highest-grossing films of its year, winning the Oscars (Hanks took his second statuette). With a legion of critics, Forrest Gump is often considered sensitive and, above all, inferior to Pulp Fiction, his main Oscar competitor, which embodied the modern cinema of the time. Here’s how his protagonist sees it: “The problem with Forrest Gump is that he made a billion dollars. If we had made a successful film, Bob [Zemeckis, el director] and I would have been geniuses. But because we made a hugely successful film, we were evil geniuses. Is it a big problem? No, but there are books of the greatest movies of all time, and Forrest Gump doesn’t show up because, oh, it’s this cheesy nostalgia feast. Every year there’s an article about the film that should have won Best Picture that year, and it’s always Pulp Fiction. Which is undoubtedly a masterpiece.”
Tom Hanks poses with the Oscar he won for “Forrest Gump” in 1995 Barry King (Getty Images)
The Miracles (1996)
Hanks’ feature film directorial debut came from a screenplay he wrote while promoting Philadelphia and Forrest Gump. “I had been talking about myself for a year, so I started writing to stay creatively sane,” he revealed to Deadline. When asked his opinion of the film years later, he said, “I love it,” and while he didn’t have the favor of audiences and critics he was accustomed to, he called it the best movie experience of its time . Life.
Saving Private Ryan (1998)
In Spielberg’s epic World War II play, the director himself seemed conflicted about the idea of putting the actor in morally dire situations, but he rebelled. “Steven Spielberg said to me, ‘I don’t think the public wants to see it [su personaje] John Miller Shoots and Kills Germans”. I said, ‘I’m sorry Steven. You’re not going to bring me here and turn that character into another just because you don’t want Tom killing Hank’s soldiers.”
You Got an Email (1998)
Nora Ephron, Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan reunited after the success of Something to Remember (1993) in a new version of The Bazaar of Surprises, a 1940 film starring James Stewart, of course. The comparison between Hanks and Stewart was not lost during the promotion: “I have chosen to ignore this issue. I mean you’ll never see me repeat Swordless Knight or How Beautiful It Is to Live! But The Bazaar of Surprises is very different. This is a very young Jimmy Stewart. It’s Jimmy Stewart before Jimmy Stewart was Jimmy Stewart.”
Tom Hanks, with his back to the camera, poses for the press in Cannes during a screening of The Da Vinci Code in 2006.Pool BENAINOUS/CTARINA/LEGRAND (Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images)
The Da Vinci Code (2006)
Tom Hanks speaks in The New York Times: “The aftermath of Robert Langdon [su personaje, y el protagonista de la saga inspirada en los best sellers de Dan Brown] they are nonsense. The Da Vinci Code was nonsense. These delightful treasure hunts are as faithful to history as the James Bond movies of spying. All we did was promise a distraction. There’s nothing wrong with a good deal as long as it’s a good deal. When we made the third film [Inferno, 2016]We proved it wasn’t such a good deal. But let me tell you something else about the Da Vinci Code. It was my forty year birthday. We were shooting in the Louvre at night. I changed my pants in front of the Mona Lisa! They brought me a birthday cake to the Great Hall! Who can have this experience?
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