49 Fun Facts About Tom Hanks

In which year was Tom Hanks born?

He was born at Mount Diablo Hospital in Concord, California. His first fame came from a sitcom in which he wore a dress.

In which state was Tom Hanks born?

Concord, in the East Bay, was the town. He grew up moving frequently between relatives.

Which sitcom gave Hanks his TV breakthrough, playing a man dressed as a woman for cheap rent?

It ran on ABC from 1980 to 1982. Peter Scolari played the other half of the pair.

Which 1984 mermaid comedy became a surprise hit and made Hanks a film lead?

It grossed more than $69 million. Ron Howard directed it, beginning a partnership that lasted decades.

Which 1988 fantasy comedy earned Hanks his first Academy Award nomination?

He played a twelve-year-old boy in an adult body. The film established him as a major Hollywood talent.

What is the name of the fortune-telling machine that grants the wish in Big?

The machine has since become a fairground fixture in its own right. The wish is granted overnight with no warning.

Which two tunes are played on the giant walking piano in Big?

The scene was filmed at the FAO Schwarz toy shop in New York. The keyboard was 16 feet long.

What milestone did Big achieve for its director, Penny Marshall?

It took $151.7 million worldwide. She had come to directing from acting in Laverne & Shirley.

For which film did Hanks win his first Academy Award for Best Actor?

He played a lawyer with AIDS suing his firm for discrimination. He won again the following year.

Hanks became only the second performer in Oscar history to do what?

Spencer Tracy had done it in 1937 and 1938. Nobody has managed it since.

Which actor was the first to win back-to-back Best Actor Oscars, for Captains Courageous and Boys Town?

He won in 1937 and 1938. Hanks matched it 56 years later.

Who directed Forrest Gump?

He also directed Hanks in Cast Away and The Polar Express. The film won six Academy Awards.

Forrest Gump was adapted from a 1986 novel by which author?

The book is far stranger than the film, sending its hero into space with an ape. Its author had to sue for a share of the profits.

Roughly how much did Forrest Gump gross worldwide?

It cost $55 million to make. It also took Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actor.

In which city's Chippewa Square was the bus stop bench scene of Forrest Gump filmed?

The bench was a prop and now sits in a museum. The square is in Georgia.

How was the famous cross-country running sequence in Forrest Gump paid for?

The studio was ready to pull the plug with the budget exhausted. Director and star split the cost between them.

Which astronaut did Hanks play in Apollo 13?

Ron Howard directed, reuniting the pair after Splash. The film is based on the commander's own book.

What did the real crew of Apollo 13 actually say, as opposed to the film's famous line?

The film shifted it to the present tense and made it a catchphrase. The mission was aborted after an oxygen tank exploded.

How were the weightless scenes in Apollo 13 filmed?

NASA granted almost four hours of genuine free-fall filming time. The aircraft is nicknamed the vomit comet.

Which two Academy Awards did Apollo 13 win?

It was nominated for nine in total. The winner for Best Picture that year was Braveheart.

In Saving Private Ryan, who did Hanks work with as director?

The two later made Catch Me If You Can and The Terminal together. The film follows a search through France after D-Day.

What job does Hanks's character do before being marooned in Cast Away?

The parcels wash ashore with him and one is never opened. The film reunited him with the director of Forrest Gump.

What is the name of the volleyball companion in Cast Away?

The face is drawn in blood from an injured hand. The brand name on the ball supplied the name.

How much weight did Hanks gain during pre-production on Cast Away?

Production then paused for a year so he could lose it and grow the beard. A second four-month halt covered the return scenes.

Roughly how much did Cast Away gross worldwide?

That made it the third-highest-grossing film of 2000. Hanks was nominated for Best Actor again.

Which Pixar character does Hanks voice?

The role began in 1995 with the first fully computer-animated feature. The fourth film in the series grossed over a billion dollars.

How much did Toy Story 4 gross worldwide in 2019?

That made it the eighth-highest-grossing film of its year. Hanks had voiced the character for 24 years by then.

In The Polar Express, what was unusual about Hanks's contribution?

The film came out in 2004, the same year as The Ladykillers and The Terminal. He performed several characters at once through performance capture.

Which real airline captain did Hanks play in a 2016 Clint Eastwood film?

The film covers the emergency landing on the Hudson River. Eastwood directed it.

Captain Phillips was based on which real event?

Barkhad Abdi played the pirate leader in his first film role. The ship was seized off Somalia in 2009.

Where did Hanks rank among American film actors by career box office in 2020?

Voice roles in animation account for a large slice of that total. He has been a leading man for four decades.

Which role did Hanks play in the film that won him his first Oscar?

The film was a mainstream American drama about the epidemic, which was rare in 1993. His second Oscar followed a year later.

How many Academy Awards did Forrest Gump win?

They included Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actor. The film beat Pulp Fiction and The Shawshank Redemption that year.

Which quotation opens Forrest Gump's story on the bench?

The line is misquoted almost universally as 'life is like'. The scene was shot in a Georgia square.

Which film did Hanks make with the Coen brothers in 2004?

It was a remake of a 1955 Ealing comedy. He made three films that year.

Which Ron Howard film did Hanks make in 1995, thirteen years after their first collaboration?

The pair had first worked together on a mermaid comedy in 1984. The 1995 film won two Academy Awards from nine nominations.

Apollo 13 was adapted from which 1994 book?

It was written by the mission's commander with Jeffrey Kluger. The title was changed for the film.

In which year did Cast Away reach cinemas?

Robert Zemeckis directed and co-produced. Hanks was nominated for Best Actor at the following spring's ceremony.

How much did Big take worldwide?

Nearly $115 million of that came from the United States and Canada. It was a landmark for its director.

Tom Hanks was born at Mount Diablo Hospital in which Bay Area city?

His mother's Portuguese family was originally named Fraga, and through his father he is a distant cousin of Abraham Lincoln and Fred Rogers.

Hanks won a Cleveland critics' award in 1978 playing Proteus in which Shakespeare play?

It was one of the rare times he played a villain; his internship at the Great Lakes Theater Festival stretched to three years and led him to drop out of college.

Hanks made his film debut in which low-budget 1980 slasher?

He had moved to New York the year before, and in 1982 he starred in the TV movie Mazes and Monsters about role-playing games gone wrong.

Which 1996 film about a 1960s pop group marked Hanks's debut as a director?

He also appeared in it as a music producer, and soon afterwards set up the Playtone company with producer Gary Goetzman.

Hanks made his Broadway debut in 2013 in which Nora Ephron play?

The role as a New York tabloid columnist earned him a Tony nomination; the run lasted 33 previews and 104 performances.

In which 2013 film did Hanks become the first actor to play Walt Disney in a mainstream movie?

Emma Thompson co-starred as Mary Poppins author P. L. Travers; the same year he played Captain Richard Phillips.

Which Halloween character did Hanks create in Saturday Night Live sketches?

The character got his own animated NBC special in October 2017; Hanks has hosted the show ten times.

For which 2020 war film did Hanks also write the screenplay?

Sony had planned a June 2020 cinema release, but the pandemic sent it to Apple TV+ instead, and a sequel is in the works.

A 1982 guest spot on which sitcom introduced Hanks to the writers of his breakout mermaid comedy?

He played a disgruntled former classmate of Fonzie; Ron Howard first considered him for the wisecracking brother role that went to John Candy.

Whom did Hanks play in Baz Luhrmann's 2022 film Elvis?

Shooting began in Queensland, Australia, in early 2020, and the film reached cinemas in June 2022 to positive reviews.