// The Chapters
From Concord to the Conscience of America
Six acts. Four decades. The man who made decency look like the most compelling thing on screen.
1956 - 1979 · The Foundation
The Kid Who Moved Ten Times
A fractured childhood that taught him to become anyone, anywhere — the first skill of a great actor.
Thomas Jeffrey Hanks was born in Concord, California. His parents divorced when he was four. His father, a traveling cook, remarried multiple times and took Tom with him across Northern California. By the time he was ten, Tom had lived in ten different houses. He was shy, lonely, and spent most of his time watching television and reading. At Cal State Sacramento, he discovered theater and dropped out to intern at the Great Lakes Theater Festival in Cleveland, where he did everything — built sets, worked lights, and performed in over fifty productions in three years.
Ten Houses
1956 - 1966 · Northern California
A boy who changed homes and schools constantly. No permanent friends. No stable family. He later said the loneliness taught him to observe people — to watch how they moved, talked, and carried themselves. The foundation of every character he'd ever play.
Great Lakes Theater
1977 - 1979 · Cleveland, Ohio
Hanks drops out of college and moves to Cleveland to intern at the Great Lakes Shakespeare Festival. He performs in The Taming of the Shrew and The Two Gentlemen of Verona. He learns every job in the theater. He meets his first wife, Samantha Lewes, and has his first child at 21.
Off Screen
Hanks has spoken openly about his childhood: "I was a kid without a lot of self-esteem who happened to find acting." The constant moving, the absence of a stable mother figure (his birth mother left when he was four), and the revolving door of stepmothers created a man who desperately wanted to belong. That yearning is visible in every "everyman" character he's ever played.
1980 - 1992 · The Comedy Years
The Funny Guy
Before he was America's most respected actor, he was America's funniest leading man. Nobody thought it would last.
Hanks moved to New York and landed a role in the ABC sitcom Bosom Buddies (1980-82), playing a man who dresses as a woman to live in a cheap hotel. It was terrible. He was charming anyway. Ron Howard cast him in Splash (1984), a mermaid comedy that made $69M. Then came The Money Pit, The Burbs, Turner & Hooch, and Joe Versus the Volcano. He was profitable, likable, and nobody took him seriously. Big (1988) changed the equation — a comedy about a kid in an adult's body earned him his first Oscar nomination and proved that Hanks could make you laugh and cry in the same scene.
Scene 08
filmed
Splash · 1984
$69M
The Mermaid Movie
1984 · Ron Howard
A romantic comedy about a man who falls in love with a mermaid. It shouldn't work. Hanks makes it work with pure likability. Ron Howard later said he cast Hanks because "he's the guy you want your sister to date." The start of everything.
The Piano Scene
1988 · Big
Hanks and Robert Loggia dance on a giant floor piano at FAO Schwarz. It's the most joyful scene in '80s cinema. Big earns $151M and Hanks's first Oscar nomination. The comedy guy is suddenly an actor. He's 32.
$151M gross
1st Oscar nom
A League of Their Own
1992 · Penny Marshall
"There's no crying in baseball!" Hanks plays a washed-up coach leading a women's baseball team during WWII. The film makes $107M and gives him one of the most quoted lines in movie history. He's still a comedy guy. That changes next year.
1993 - 1994 · The Transformation
Back to Back
Two films. Two Oscars. The most dominant stretch by any actor in Academy history.
In 1993, Jonathan Demme cast Hanks as Andrew Beckett in Philadelphia — one of the first major studio films to deal with the AIDS crisis. Hanks lost 30 pounds and delivered a performance that silenced every critic who'd dismissed him as a lightweight. He won his first Oscar. The following year, Robert Zemeckis put him in Forrest Gump. The film made $678M worldwide, became a cultural phenomenon, and Hanks won his second consecutive Best Actor Oscar — only the second person in history to achieve the feat after Spencer Tracy in 1937-38.
Scene 22
filmed
Philadelphia · 1993
$206M
The Courtroom
December 23, 1993 · Jonathan Demme
The scene where Andrew Beckett plays Maria Callas for his lawyer while dying of AIDS. Hanks, gaunt and hollow, translates the opera in real-time, tears streaming. It's the scene that won him the Oscar and changed how America talked about the epidemic.
Scene 26
filmed
Forrest Gump · 1994
$678M
Life Is Like a Box of Chocolates
July 6, 1994 · Robert Zemeckis
The simple man on the bench. $678M worldwide. Six Oscars. The role that defined "everyman" for a generation. Hanks improvised the opening monologue. Zemeckis almost cut it. The line about chocolates was added in post-production. Two consecutive Best Actor Oscars — the first since Spencer Tracy in 1938.
The Oscar Speech
March 27, 1995 · 67th Academy Awards
Hanks wins his second consecutive Oscar and delivers a speech thanking his wife Rita Wilson. The camera catches her crying. It's the moment that cements them as Hollywood's most enduring couple. Twenty-eight years later, they're still together.
Off Screen
During the Philadelphia shoot, Denzel Washington (who plays Hanks's lawyer) told reporters he was genuinely disturbed by how thin Hanks had become. Hanks dropped from 185 to 150 pounds. The makeup team added prosthetic lesions. Demme shot the film chronologically so Hanks's physical deterioration would track naturally. The final courtroom scene was filmed last — Hanks was at his thinnest.
1995 - 2002 · The Spielberg Partnership
Captain Miller
He teamed up with the greatest director alive and made the greatest war film ever shot.
Apollo 13 (1995) with Ron Howard put Hanks in space and earned $355M. Then came Spielberg. Saving Private Ryan's opening twenty minutes at Omaha Beach redefined what war looked like on screen. Hanks played Captain Miller with quiet, shaking authority — a schoolteacher who'd become a killer. The film earned him his fifth Oscar nomination. He followed it with The Green Mile, Cast Away (his sixth nomination — alone on screen for 80 minutes with a volleyball), and Road to Perdition with Sam Mendes. By 2002, Hanks was the most bankable and respected actor in Hollywood simultaneously.
Scene 34
filmed
Saving Private Ryan · 1998
$482M
Omaha Beach
July 24, 1998 · Steven Spielberg
Twenty-four minutes of the most brutal, realistic combat footage ever staged. Hanks's trembling hand. The sound design that won Oscars. Veterans in the audience reported PTSD episodes. Spielberg didn't rehearse the beach scene — he wanted the actors genuinely disoriented.
Wilson!
December 22, 2000 · Cast Away
Hanks alone on an island for two-thirds of a film. His only scene partner is a volleyball with a bloody handprint. When Wilson floats away, audiences cried for a sporting good. Hanks lost 50 pounds. His sixth Oscar nomination. The production shut down for a year so he could lose the weight.
Houston, We Have a Problem
June 30, 1995 · Apollo 13
Ron Howard's real-life space thriller. Hanks, Kevin Bacon, and Bill Paxton filmed in NASA's Vomit Comet for weightless scenes. $355M worldwide. Hanks plays Jim Lovell with calm precision under impossible pressure — a character he was born to play.
2004 - 2019 · The Institution
America's Dad
He stopped chasing Oscars and became something more valuable: the most trusted man in American public life.
The Polar Express. Charlie Wilson's War. Captain Phillips with Paul Greengrass — the "Look at me. I'm the captain now" scene became an instant classic, and Hanks's breakdown in the nurse's office at the end is the most emotionally devastating sequence in his career. Sully with Clint Eastwood. The Post with Meryl Streep and Spielberg. A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood as Mister Rogers — the casting was so perfect it felt like a statement about who Hanks actually is. He'd become less an actor and more an institution.
The Nurse's Office
2013 · Captain Phillips
The Somali pirates are gone. Captain Phillips is safe. A real Navy corpsman examines him. And Tom Hanks breaks down — shaking, crying, unable to speak. The scene was largely improvised. The corpsman was a real military medic, not an actress. It's the rawest moment in Hanks's career.
Mister Rogers
2019 · A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood
Hanks plays Fred Rogers and the casting is so obvious it feels like destiny. He didn't do an impersonation. He captured the essence — the patience, the eye contact, the radical kindness. Hanks later said it was the most personally affecting role of his career.
Sully
2016 · Clint Eastwood
Hanks plays Chesley Sullenberger, the pilot who landed US Airways Flight 1549 on the Hudson River. Eastwood shot the film in 35 days. Hanks met the real Sully multiple times. "He's the most decent man I've ever met," Hanks said. Critics noted the irony: the most decent actor playing the most decent pilot.
Off Screen
In 2013, Hanks was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes, which he attributed to weight fluctuations from years of physical transformations for roles. He gained and lost more than 100 combined pounds across Philadelphia, Cast Away, and A League of Their Own. He's spoken publicly about managing the condition and the toll that method acting takes on the body long-term.
2020 - Present · The Legacy
The Last Good Man
Covid Patient Zero. Best-selling novelist. Greek citizen. Still the most trusted face in Hollywood.
In March 2020, Hanks and Rita Wilson became the first major celebrities to announce they had tested positive for COVID-19, while filming in Australia. His calm, reassuring social media posts during quarantine became a comfort to millions. He went on to publish his first novel, The Making of Another Major Motion Picture Masterpiece (2023), to strong reviews. He received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Obama. He became a Greek citizen (Rita Wilson is Greek-American). At 69, Tom Hanks remains what he's always been: the person America trusts most.
Patient Zero
March 11, 2020 · Gold Coast, Australia
Hanks posts a photo of himself and Rita Wilson in an Australian hospital room. "We have Covid-19." The post is seen by 100 million people. In the most frightening week of the pandemic, America's Dad told everyone it was going to be okay. And people believed him.
The Novelist
May 2023 · Knopf Publishing
Hanks publishes his first novel and it's actually good. The Making of Another Major Motion Picture Masterpiece draws on four decades of insider knowledge. He does the audiobook himself. Because of course he does. The reviews are warm. The sales are massive.