Hanks won Best Actor two years in a row
Thomas Jeffrey Hanks, born 9 July 1956 in Concord, California, became a global everyman star. He took consecutive Best Actor Oscars for Philadelphia (1993) and Forrest Gump (1994)—a rare back-to-back feat—after comedy hits from Splash to Big made him bankable.
Hospital-worker mother Janet and itinerant cook Amos “Bud” Hanks divorced in 1960; Tom, sister Sandra, and brother Larry went with their father while youngest Jim stayed with Janet. Portuguese Fraga roots on his mother’s side mixed with English ancestry on his father’s. A Bay Area childhood included Alameda Theatre movie memories and a teenage stretch one journalist called Bible-toting evangelical; school left him feeling geeky and unpopular with peers and teachers alike. Theater study at Chabot College and California State University, Sacramento, led to a three-year Great Lakes Theater Festival internship covering nearly every stage craft under Vincent Dowling.
New York brought a 1980 slasher debut in He Knows You’re Alone and ABC’s Bosom Buddies from 1980 to 1982. A Happy Days guest spot introduced writers Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel, who cast him in Splash (1984); The Money Pit, Big, and A League of Their Own locked comedy stardom before the Oscar dramas. Romantic comedies Sleepless in Seattle and You’ve Got Mail, plus Apollo 13, Cast Away, and later Playtone productions such as From the Earth to the Moon, broadened the brand from clown to earnest American surrogate on both big and small screens.
Ten Saturday Night Live hosting gigs and filmmaking credits underline control behind the likability. In 2020 rankings of all-time box-office stars he placed fourth-highest domestically among actors—proof the consecutive Oscars sat atop commercial durability, not instead of it, and that audiences still trusted him with both tears and laughs.
Source: Tom Hanks
