Thomas J. Hanks was born July 9th, 1956, in Concord, California. Tom and his elder siblings were raised by their father Amos Hanks, following the divorce of their parents. Because Amos Hanks was a chef, it forced his family to move every six months in pursuit of jobs. This unstable upbringing meant many schools for young Tom, who had to readjust to his new surroundings practically every semester. Initially a shy schoolboy, he dealt with these readjustments by becoming the class clown and taking on different personality — almost considered practice for his career.
He took these “characters” to the stage and he began participating in high school plays. While a student at Chabot Junior College, he saw a production of The Iceman Cometh for a class, which convinced him that he wanted to become an actor. He transferred to California State University in Sacramento as a theater major, and was recruited by the Great Lakes Shakespeare Festival in Ohio after his outstanding school performance in Cherry Orchard. After 3 years of experience with the Shakespeare festival, he headed to the New York with big dreams. Going through the requisite auditions before hitting it big, Hanks finally landed his debut role in 1980, in the film He Knows You’re Alone. He then landed a role in the ABC comedy, Bosom Buddies, a role which forced him to dress up like a women. Following the Bosom Buddies, he made many guest appearances on a couple of popular ’80s sitcoms such as Family Ties, Taxi and Happy Days, which led to his role in Splash. Director Ron Howard (of Happy Days fame) tapped Hanks to audition for the supporting role in Splash, and he landed the lead.
The Essay on Gender Role Reversal
Throughout one's life each of us face new obstacles due to the progression of the life cycle. Many of these so-called obstacles we encounter are from the many role demands that each one of us has to fulfill. As we get older our lives take on new roles, such as being a: wife, parent, school teacher, etc. One role, however, will never leave us, that's our gender. We will never truly know what it's ...
The movie got some good reviews, but his career was heading downward with his next movies, such as Bachelor Party, Volunteers (where he met his wife, Rita Wilson), The Money Pit, Nothing In Common, and Dragnet. But the slump came to an end when he did the movie Big in 1988 a comedy about a teenager trapped in a man’s body. He did a couple of more crapy movies and in 1993, he became an A-list actor and an Oscar favorite. Hanks won the hearts of women in Sleepless in Seattle and the hearts of everyone as an AIDS victim in Philadelphia. He also won the Academy Award for Best Actor that year, and picked up another Academy Award for his title role in Forrest Gump the following year. Ever since then, he has had a great career. In 1995, he went to the moon in Apollo 13, and lent his voice to cowboy doll Woody in Disney’s animated feature, Toy Story.
He got back into the astronaut’s uniform for the made-for-TV miniseries, From the Earth to the Moon (which he also directed and produced); re-teamed with his Sleepless co-star for the romantic comedy You’ve Got Mail; and returned as the optimistic Woody for the hit Toy Story 2. On a more serious note, Hanks starred as Captain John H. Miller in Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan, and as a prison guard in The Green Mile, which both got him a Best Actor Oscar nominations. Hanks has proved that his talent is truly multi-faceted: as a regular host on Saturday Night Live, he has proved his comedic side, while as director of features such as That Thing You Do! (which he also wrote the script for) and the television miniseries Band of Brothers, and producer of a lot of features (most notably Cast Away), Hanks has mastered every angle of filmmaking. Hanks can next be seen as an island-bound Federal Express inspector in Cast Away, as well as in the upcoming feature, Road To Perdition.
