Tom Hank Oscar winner

Tom Hanks to star in "Charlie Wilson's War"
Double Oscar-winner Tom Hanks has picked his post-Da Vinci Code project. The actor will play a wayward United States politician in Aaron Sorkin's new movie for Universal Pictures.

Tom Hanks
born: 09-07-1956
birth place: Concord, California
From the simple and loveable title character in Forrest Gump, to a charismatic and liberal Texas congressman in Charlie Wilson's War, Tom Hanks has consistently demonstrated his versatility as an actor.

With back to back Oscar wins, Tom Hanks is one of Hollywood's biggest stars and most beloved personalities.

But more important to him than all his career success is his happy marriage to actress Rita Wilson. Together, Tom and Rita have forged one of the happiest unions and most close-knit families in Hollywood.

Although they have achieved a grounded family life together, the childhoods of Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson were as different as night and day. While Rita grew up in an extremely close Greek Orthodox household, Tom was a child of divorce, always searching for an identity. However different their childhoods, Tom and Rita were both drawn to the spotlight at an early age. Tom excelled at acting at Skyline High School in Oakland, and Rita segued from modelling to acting as a teenager.

Tom and Rita first met on the set of his hit television show Bosom Buddies, but it wasn't until they worked together on the film Volunteers years later that sparks flew between the two.


The two wed in 1988, and while Rita focused on family, Tom found himself skyrocketing to stardom. He received an Academy Award nomination for Big in 1988, and won the Oscar for his role in Philadelphia in 1994. He won again the following year for his work in Forrest Gump. But as much as their Hollywood careers mean to Tom and Rita, their most important roles are as devoted parents to their two young sons.

Thomas Jeffrey Hanks was the third of four children. Hanks’ parents, Amos, a chef, and Janet, a hospital worker, divorced when Tom was young. Tom, his older sister Sandra, and older brother Larry, went to live with their father while the youngest, Jim stayed with his mother.

The Hanks family grew through remarriage with Amos’s new wife bringing five children to the house. The marriage only lasted two years and Amos became a solo parent struggling to make ends meet for his children. The family moved around a lot, Tom would later tell an interviewer by the age of 10 he had had “three mothers, five grammar schools and ten houses”. With yet another new stepmother the Hanks family settled in Oakland, California where Tom attended Skyline High School, excelling at soccer and athletics. Hanks also became interested in acting at high school appearing in productions of South Pacific and Twelfth Night and winning the school’s best actor award in 1974.

Hanks continued acting, studying theatre at Chabot College while working part-time at a hotel. A performance of Eugene O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh sealed Hanks’ ambition to become an actor and he transferred to California State University. Hanks struggled to win roles in the college productions so he auditioned for a theatre company’s production of Chekov’s The Cherry Orchard. The director, Vincent Dowling, invited Tom to work at a Shakespeare Festival he was artistic director of in Cleveland. Hanks packed his bags and moved to Ohio to play Gremmie in The Taming of the Shrew. Hanks’ girlfriend, Samantha Lewes, moved with him when he returned to Cleveland the following year. This time he dropped out of college to take a role in Two Gentleman of Verona, which won him a best actor award from the Cleveland Critics Circle.

Hanks and Samantha moved to New York in 1979 where Samantha had their first child. Hanks struggled for work but had a couple of Shakespearean roles before making his screen debut in the slasher movie He Knows You’re Alone, followed by the TV movie Mazes and Monsters. In early 1980 Hanks landed his first major role as one of the lead characters in the sitcom Bosom Buddies. The Hanks family moved to California where their second chid, Elizabeth, was born. Bosom Buddies ended after two seasons and Hanks played small roles on Family Ties, The Love Boat and Happy Days where he fought The Fonz. On Happy Days he met Ron Howard, who played Richie Cunningham but, crucially, was also launching a career as a director. Howard asked Hanks to audition for a minor role in a movie he was making called Splash in 1984. Hanks ended up winning the lead role opposite Darryl Hannah, who played a mermaid washed up in modern day America. The film was a box office success and so his career was launched.

Hanks enjoyed a period of hits and misses over the next few years appearing in several comedic roles in films such as Bachelor Party, The Man With One Red Shoe, and The Money Pit. He also took a number of serious roles including Nothing In Common and Every Time We Say Goodbye. His marriage to Samantha ended in 1985, despite Tom taking a break from movies to involve his wife more in his work.

There were a couple more films (Dragnet, Punchline) before Hanks made his breakthrough movie. 1988’s Big established Hanks as a star. The film saw Hanks play a kid who wishes he was a grown-up and has his wish fulfilled by a fair-ground fortune machine. His portrayal of a kid in a man’s body delighted audiences and the film grossed over $100 million at the box office. In 1988 Hanks married Rita Wilson, an actress he had met on Bosom Buddies.

Hanks followed up his first hit movie with what he now admits were some bad decisions. 1989’s Turner and Hooch was a mediocre film, as was The ‘Burbs (1989) and Joe Versus the Volcano (1990). Bonfire of the Vanities threatened to finish his career after it was rated as one of the biggest flops ever. Despite this, the year finished on a high note with the birth of son Chester.

Hanks played a baseball coach in A League of Their Own in 1992, the film marking the beginning of a juggernaut of hits for the actor. The romantic comedy Sleepless in Seattle with Meg Ryan was a massive hit and his turn as a gay lawyer with AIDS in the drama Philadelphia won him an Oscar for Best Actor.


Forrest Gump in 1994 saw Hanks play a simple-minded man who lurches heart-warmingly through American history and was a runaway success. Hanks won his second Best Actor Oscar, the first person to win consecutive awards for 55 years. The momentum continued into 1995, with Hanks voicing the character of Woody in the hit children’s movie Toy Story and then making another blockbuster as an astronaut in Ron Howard’s Apollo 13.

A brief respite to write and direct That Thing You Do was followed up by the romantic comedy You’ve Got Mail, again with Meg Ryan, and then the epic and critically-acclaimed war movie Saving Private Ryan. The Steven Spielberg film was yet another massive success for Hanks who was awarded a Distinguished Public Service Award, the highest award the Navy can offer a civilian. Spielberg won an Oscar for his direction. The pair reunited to recreate the film for television when they made the series Band of Brothers, which was another acclaimed success.

Next was The Green Mile, hit, Toy Story 2, hit, Cast Away, hit, Road to Perdition, a slight slip – it only made $180 million. Catch Me If You Can with Leonardo DiCaprio in 2002 was another return to box office success followed by The Terminal and The Polar Express in 2004. In 2006, Hanks starred in the adaptation of the massively popular novel The Da Vinci Code. Splash, in 1988, was considered a hit making $69 million to date. The Da Vinci Code has made $758 million in two years. The total revenue from his films exceeds $5 billion. It goes without saying that Hanks is a very rich man.

In 2007, Hanks played the role of Charlie Wilson, a charismatic and liberal Texas congressman, in Charlie Wilson's War. The movie tells the tale of how Wilson joins forces with his sometimes lover, Houston socialite and active anti-communist Joanne Herring (played by Julia Roberts) and CIA Operative Gust Avrakotos (played by Philip Seymour Hoffman), in the largest and most successful covert operation in history - the arming of the Afghan freedom fighters in their fight against the Soviet Union.

Hanks has four children, the fourth, Chester, was born in 1990. Hanks is a sports fan, listing the Oakland Athletics baseball team and Aston Villa football team as favourites. He also has a great interest in space and sits on the board of the National Space Society and wrote, produced, and directed the miniseries From the Earth To The Moon. On his MySpace page Hanks lists “old manual typewriters” as a hobby.

Films

Charlie Wilson's War (2007)
A Cold Case (2005)
The Polar Express (2004)
The Terminal (2004)
The Ladykillers (2004)
Catch Me If You Can (2002)
Road to Perdition (2002)
Cast Away (2000)
Toy Story 2 (1999)
The Green Mile (1999)
You've Got Mail (1998)
Saving Private Ryan (1998)
That Thing You Do! (1996)
Toy Story (1995) (voice)
Apollo 13 (1995)
Vault of Horror I (1994)
Forrest Gump (1994)
Philadelphia (1993)
A League of Their Own (1992)
Radio Flyer (1992)
The Bonfire of the Vanities (1990)
Joe Versus the Volcano (1990)
Turner & Hooch (1989)
The 'burbs (1989)
Punchline (1988)
Big (1988)
Dragnet (1987)
Every Time We Say Goodbye (1986)
Nothing in Common (1986)
The Money Pit (1986)
Volunteers (1985)
The Man with One Red Shoe (1985)
Bachelor Party (1984)
Splash (1984)
He Knows You're Alone (1980)

( Sam Carpenter )