Wendy Hanks Popular Books

Wendy Hanks Biography & Facts

Thomas Jeffrey Hanks (born July 9, 1956) is an American actor and filmmaker. Known for both his comedic and dramatic roles, he is one of the most popular and recognizable film stars worldwide, and is regarded as an American cultural icon. Hanks' films have grossed more than $4.9 billion in North America and more than $9.96 billion worldwide, making him the fourth-highest-grossing actor in North America. He has received numerous honors including the AFI Life Achievement Award in 2002, the Kennedy Center Honor in 2014, the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the French Legion of Honor both in 2016, as well as the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award in 2020. Hanks made his breakthrough with leading roles in a series of comedy films which received positive media attention, such as Splash (1984), The Money Pit (1986), Big (1988), and A League of Their Own (1992). He won two consecutive Academy Awards for Best Actor for starring as a gay lawyer suffering from AIDS in Philadelphia (1993) and the title character in Forrest Gump (1994). Hanks collaborated with film 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), as well as the WW II miniseries Band of Brothers (2001), The Pacific (2010), and Masters of the Air (2024). With the former he launched his career as a director, producer, and screenwriter. He has also frequently collaborated with film directors Ron Howard, Nora Ephron, and Robert Zemeckis. Hanks' other films include the romantic comedies Sleepless in Seattle (1993) and You've Got Mail (1998); the dramas Apollo 13 (1995), The Green Mile (1999), Cast Away (2000), Road to Perdition (2002) and Cloud Atlas (2012); and the biographical dramas Charlie Wilson's War (2007), Captain Phillips (2013), Saving Mr. Banks (2013), Sully (2016), A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (2019), News of the World (2020) and Elvis (2022). He has also appeared as the title character in the Robert Langdon film series, and voiced Sheriff Woody in the Toy Story film series (1995–2019). Hanks directed the comedy That Thing You Do! (1996), followed by the romantic comedy Larry Crowne (2011), both of which he acted in. In 1998, Hanks launched his production company Playtone which has an exclusive television development deal with HBO. For his work on television, Hanks has also won seven Primetime Emmy Awards for his work as a producer of various limited series and television movies, including From the Earth to the Moon (1998), Band of Brothers (2001), John Adams (2008), The Pacific (2009), Game Change (2012), and Olive Kitteridge (2015). He made his Broadway debut in Nora Ephron's Lucky Guy (2013) earning a Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play nomination. Early life and family Hanks was born in Concord, California, on July 9, 1956, to hospital worker Janet Marylyn (née Frager) and itinerant cook Amos "Bud" Hanks. His mother was from a Portuguese family; their surname was originally "Fraga". His father had English ancestry, and through his line, Hanks is a distant cousin of President Abraham Lincoln and children's host Fred Rogers, whom he played. His parents divorced in 1960. Their three oldest children, Sandra (later Sandra Hanks Benoiton, a writer), Larry (who became an entomology professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign), and Tom, went with their father, while the youngest, Jim (who also became an actor and filmmaker), remained with their mother in Red Bluff, California. In his childhood, Hanks' family moved often; by the age of 10, he had lived in 10 different houses. While Hanks' family religious history was Catholic and Mormon, as an adult he converted to Greek Orthodox Christianity. One journalist characterized Hanks' teenage self as being a "Bible-toting evangelical" for several years. In school, he was unpopular with students and teachers alike, later telling Rolling Stone magazine, "I was a geek, a spaz. I was horribly, painfully, terribly shy. At the same time, I was the guy who'd yell out funny captions during filmstrips. But I didn't get into trouble. I was always a real good kid and pretty responsible." Hanks acted in school plays, including South Pacific, while attending Skyline High School in Oakland, California. Having grown up in the Bay Area, Hanks says that some of his first movie memories was seeing movies in the Alameda Theatre in Alameda, California. Hanks studied theater at Chabot College in Hayward, California, and transferred to California State University, Sacramento after two years. During a 2001 interview with sportscaster Bob Costas, Hanks was asked whether he would rather have an Oscar or a Heisman Trophy. He replied he would rather win a Heisman by playing halfback for the California Golden Bears. He told New York magazine in 1986, "Acting classes looked like the best place for a guy who liked to make a lot of noise and be rather flamboyant. I spent a lot of time going to plays. I wouldn't take dates with me. I'd just drive to a theater, buy myself a ticket, sit in the seat and read the program, and then get into the play completely. I spent a lot of time like that, seeing Brecht, Tennessee Williams, Ibsen, and all that." During his years studying theater, Hanks met Vincent Dowling, head of the Great Lakes Theater Festival in Cleveland, Ohio. At Dowling's suggestion, Hanks became an intern at the festival. His internship stretched into a three-year experience that covered most aspects of theater production, including lighting, set design, and stage management, prompting Hanks to drop out of college. During the same time, Hanks won the Cleveland Critics Circle Award for Best Actor for his 1978 performance as Proteus in Shakespeare's The Two Gentlemen of Verona, one of the few times he played a villain. In 2010, Time magazine named Hanks one of the "Top 10 College Dropouts". Career 1980–1989 Early work, sitcom and comedy films In 1979, Hanks moved to New York City, where he made his film debut in the low-budget slasher film He Knows You're Alone (1980) and landed a starring role in the television movie Mazes and Monsters. Early that year, he was cast as the lead, Callimaco, in the Riverside Shakespeare Company's production of Niccolò Machiavelli's The Mandrake, directed by Daniel Southern. The following year, Hanks landed one of the lead roles, that of character Kip Wilson, on the ABC television pilot of Bosom Buddies. He and Peter Scolari played a pair of young advertising men forced to dress as women so they could live in an inexpensive all-female hotel. Hanks had previously partnered with Scolari on the 1970s game show Make Me Laugh. After landing the role, Hanks moved to Los Angeles. Bosom Buddies ran for two seasons, and, although the ratings were never strong, television critics gave the program high marks. "The first day I saw him on the set," co-producer Ian Praiser told Rolling Stone, "I thought, 'Too bad he won't be in televi.... Discover the Wendy Hanks popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Wendy Hanks books.