Tom Hanks

Thomas Jeffrey Hanks was born on July 9, 1956, in Concord, California, a suburb of San Francisco. His mother, Janet Marylyn, worked as a hospital worker, and his father, Amos "Bud" Hanks, was an itinerant cook. His mother came from a Portuguese family whose surname was originally "Fraga," while his father had English ancestry, making Hanks a distant cousin of Nancy Hanks, her son President Abraham Lincoln, and children's television host Fred Rogers. His parents divorced in 1960, after which Hanks and his two older siblings, Sandra and Larry, went to live with their father, while the youngest sibling, Jim, who later became an actor and filmmaker, remained with their mother in Red Bluff, California. The family relocated frequently during Hanks's childhood; by the age of ten, he had lived in ten different houses.

Hanks attended Skyline High School in Oakland, California, where he participated in school plays including a production of South Pacific. He went on to study theater at Chabot College in Hayward, California, before transferring to California State University, Sacramento. During his theater studies, he encountered Vincent Dowling, head of the Great Lakes Theater Festival in Cleveland, Ohio, and at Dowling's suggestion became an intern at the festival. That internship extended into a three-year experience encompassing lighting, set design, and stage management, and Hanks ultimately left college without completing his degree. While at the festival, he won the Cleveland Critics Circle Award for Best Actor for his 1978 portrayal of Proteus in Shakespeare's The Two Gentlemen of Verona.

In 1979, Hanks relocated to New York City, where he made his film debut in the low-budget slasher film He Knows You're Alone (1980) and appeared in the television movie Mazes and Monsters (1982). He also took on the lead role of Callimaco in the Riverside Shakespeare Company's production of Niccolò Machiavelli's The Mandrake, directed by Daniel Southern. He then landed one of the lead roles in the ABC television sitcom Bosom Buddies (1980–1982), playing Kip Wilson alongside Peter Scolari, with the two portraying young advertising men who disguise themselves as women to live in an inexpensive all-female hotel. Though the show's ratings were modest, it drew favorable notices from television critics and ran for two seasons.

A guest appearance on a 1982 episode of Happy Days brought Hanks into contact with writers Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel, who recommended him to director Ron Howard for the romantic comedy fantasy Splash (1984). Hanks secured the lead role, and the film became a surprise box office success, grossing more than $69 million. He followed it with the sex comedy Bachelor Party, also in 1984, and made three guest appearances on Family Ties in 1983–84 as Elyse Keaton's alcoholic brother Ned Donnelly. With Nothing in Common (1986), co-starring Jackie Gleason, Hanks began moving beyond purely comedic work into more dramatic territory. Additional comedy hits during this period included The Money Pit (1986) and Big (1988).

Hanks's film career expanded significantly through the late 1980s and into the 1990s. He appeared in A League of Their Own (1992) and the romantic comedies Sleepless in Seattle (1993) and You've Got Mail (1998). He won consecutive Academy Awards for Best Actor for his performances as a gay lawyer with AIDS in Philadelphia (1993) and as the title character in Forrest Gump (1994). Further dramatic roles followed in Apollo 13 (1995), The Green Mile (1999), Cast Away (2000), and Road to Perdition (2002). He also directed and acted in That Thing You Do! (1996) and Larry Crowne (2011), and voiced Sheriff Woody in the Toy Story franchise beginning in 1995. He played the title character in the Robert Langdon film series from 2006 to 2016 and portrayed Fred Rogers in A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (2019).

Hanks collaborated with director Steven Spielberg on five films: Saving Private Ryan (1998), Catch Me If You Can (2002), The Terminal (2004), Bridge of Spies (2015), and The Post (2017). The two also worked together on three World War II miniseries: Band of Brothers (2001), The Pacific (2010), and Masters of the Air (2024). Additional biographical film roles included appearances in Charlie Wilson's War (2007), Captain Phillips (2013), Saving Mr. Banks (2013), Sully (2016), and Elvis (2022). He also appeared in Cloud Atlas (2012) and News of the World (2020).

Through his production company Playtone, Hanks produced several limited series and television movies, including From the Earth to the Moon (1998), Band of Brothers, John Adams (2008), The Pacific, Game Change (2012), and Olive Kitteridge (2015). He has hosted Saturday Night Live ten times.

Hanks made his Broadway debut in 2013 in Nora Ephron's Lucky Guy, earning both a Theatre World Award and a nomination for the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play. Among his broader body of honors, Hanks has received two Academy Awards, seven Emmy Awards, and four Golden Globe Awards, along with five BAFTA nominations. He was presented with the AFI Life Achievement Award in 2002, the Kennedy Center Honor in 2014, the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2016, and the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award in 2020. He ranks as the fourth-highest-grossing American film actor.