Tom Hanks

Thomas Jeffrey "Tom" Hanks 

9 July 1956

An American actor, director, producer, and writer. Hanks studied theater at Chabot College in Hayward, California, and transferred to California State University in Sacramento two years later. Hanks told New York magazine in 1986: "Acting classes looked like the best place for a guy who liked to make a lot of noise and be rather flamboyant ...I spent a lot of time going to plays. I wouldn't take dates with me. I'd just drive to a theater, buy myself a ticket, sit in the seat and read the program, and then get into the play completely. I spent a lot of time like that, seeing Brecht, Tennessee Williams, Ibsen, and all that."

Hanks is known for his collaboration with film director Steven Spielberg on "Saving Private Ryan" (1998), "Catch Me If You Can" (2002), and "The Terminal" (2004), as well as the 2001 miniseries "Band of Brothers", which launched Hanks as a successful director, producer, and writer. In 2010, Spielberg and Hanks were executive producers on the HBO miniseries "The Pacific" (a companion piece to Band of Brothers). 

Hanks has been nominated for numerous awards during his career. He won a Golden Globe Award and an Academy Award for Best Actor for his role in "Philadelphia", as well as a Golden Globe, an Academy Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award, and a People's Choice Award for Best Actor for his role in "Forrest Gump". In 2004, he received the Stanley Kubrick Britannia Award for Excellence in Film from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA).

As actor, producer, director, screenwriter

• He Knows You're Alone (1980)
• Splash (1984)
• Bachelor Party (1984)
• The Man with One Red Shoe (1985)
• Volunteers (1985)
• The Money Pit (1986)
• Nothing in Common (1986)
• Every Time We Say Goodbye (1986)
• Dragnet (1987)
• Big (1988)
• Punchline (1988)
• The 'Burbs (1989)
• Turner & Hooch (1989)
• Joe Versus the Volcano (1990)
• The Bonfire of the Vanities (1990)
• Radio Flyer (1992)
• A League of Their Own (1992)
• Sleepless in Seattle (1993)
• Philadelphia (1993)
• Forrest Gump (1994)
• Apollo 13 (1995)
• Toy Story (1995)
• That Thing You Do! (1996)
• Saving Private Ryan (1998)
• You've Got Mail (1998)
• Toy Story 2 (1999)
• The Green Mile (1999)
• Cast Away (2000)
• My Big Fat Greek Wedding (2002)
• Road to Perdition (2002)
• Catch Me If You Can (2002)
• The Ladykillers (2004)
• Connie and Carla (2004)
• The Terminal (2004)
• Elvis Has Left the Building (2004)
• The Polar Express (2004)
• Magnificent Desolation: Walking on the Moon 3D (2005)
• The Da Vinci Code (2006)
• Cars (2006)
• The Ant Bully (2006)
• Starter for 10 (2006)
• Evan Almighty (2007)
• Charlie Wilson's War (2007)
• The Simpsons Movie (2007)
• Mamma Mia! (2008)
• City of Ember (2008)
• The Great Buck Howard (2009)
• My Life in Ruins (2009)
• Angels & Demons (2009)
• Where the Wild Things Are (2009)
• Beyond All Boundaries (2009)
• Toy Story 3 (2010)
• Hawaiian Vacation (2011)
• Larry Crowne (2011)
• Small Fry (2011)
• Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2011)
• Cloud Atlas (2012)
• Partysaurus Rex (2012)
• Parkland (2013)
• Captain Phillips (2013)
• Saving Mr. Banks (2013)
• Bridge of Spies (2015)
• Ithaca (2015)
• My Big Fat Greek Wedding (2016)
• A Hologram for the King (2016)
• Sully (2016)
• Inferno (2016)
• The Circle (2016)
• Felt (2017)
• Toy Story 4 (2019)

Quotations

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As long as you as an individual... can convince yourself that in order to move forward as best you can you have to be optimistic, you can be described as 'one of the faithful,' one of those people who can say, 'Well, look, something's going to happen! Let's just keep trying. Let's not give up.

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A hero is somebody who voluntarily walks into the unknown.

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Everybody has something that chews them up and, for me, that thing was always loneliness. The cinema has the power to make you not feel lonely, even when you are.

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I think it's better to feel good than to look good.

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Some people go to bed at night thinking, 'That was a good day.' I am one of those who worries and asks, 'How did I screw up today?'

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You cannot look up at the night sky on the Planet Earth and not wonder what it's like to be up there amongst the stars. And I always look up at the moon and see it as the single most romantic place within the cosmos.

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But I also think all of the great stories in literature deal with loneliness. Sometimes it's by way of heartbreak, sometimes it's by way of injustice, sometimes it's by way of fate. There's an infinite number of ways to examine it.

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If it wasn't hard, everyone would do it. It's the hard that makes it great.

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I understand the concept of optimism. But I think with me what you get is a lack of cynicism.

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I love what I do for a living, it's the greatest job in the world, but you have to survive an awful lot of attention that you don't truly deserve and you have to live up to your professional responsibilities and I'm always trying to balance that with what is really important.

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It's just as hard... staying happily married as it is doing movies.

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No journalist has ever been in my house and no photographs have ever been taken of where I live. I don't parade my family out for display, which is the way it will stay.

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When I was growing up, everybody in charge, my parents and teachers, had all survived the war, and they talked about the war like it was the Kraken - you know, this huge beast that roamed the earth during their formative years.

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