Tom Hanks

Thomas Jeffrey Hanks, born July 9, 1956, in Concord, California, is an American actor, filmmaker, and author widely regarded as one of the most versatile and beloved performers in the history of American cinema. Often compared to Jimmy Stewart for his gift of projecting genuine warmth and moral integrity, Hanks grew up moving between relatives across Northern California after his parents' early divorce, finding an anchor in school theater. He studied at Chabot College and California State University Sacramento before heading to New York for regional theater, breaking into television with the cross-dressing sitcom Bosom Buddies (1980-1982) before coming to national attention in the comedy Splash (1984). His film career transformed with the romantic fantasy Big (1988), which earned his first Oscar nomination, but he became the most dominant dramatic screen actor of the 1990s by winning back-to-back Academy Awards for Best Actor — for his portrayal of a gay lawyer dying of AIDS in Philadelphia (1993), directed by Jonathan Demme, which helped shift mainstream public attitudes toward HIV/AIDS, and for his transcendent title performance in Forrest Gump (1994), Robert Zemeckis's sweeping portrait of American history through the eyes of an innocent heart from Alabama that became one of the highest-grossing films ever made and permanently embedded its images and phrases in popular culture. He continued with Apollo 13 (1995), the Toy Story franchise (1995-2019), Saving Private Ryan (1998) — Spielberg's harrowing World War II masterpiece — Cast Away (2000), The Green Mile (1999), Road to Perdition (2002), The Terminal (2004), Captain Phillips (2013), Bridge of Spies (2015), and A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (2019) in which he played Fred Rogers. His creative partnership with Steven Spielberg produced both Saving Private Ryan and the landmark HBO miniseries Band of Brothers (2001) and The Pacific (2010). His personal warmth and public decency have made him one of the most trusted figures in American life.