Tom hanks

Tom Hanks;

Thomas Jeffrey Hanks 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's 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.

Hanks made his breakthrough with leading roles in a series of comedy films which received positive media attention, such as Splash (1984), Bachelor Party (1984), 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).^[5] 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 2001 miniseries Band of Brothers, which launched him as a director, producer, and screenwriter. Hanks's 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), and News of the World (2020). 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's accolades include two Academy Awards out of six nominations. Hanks has also won 7 Primetime Emmy Awards for his work as a producer of various limited series and television movies, including From the Earth to the Moon, Band of Brothers, John Adams, and The Pacific. In 2013, he received a Tony Award nomination for Best Actor in a Play for his performance in Nora Ephron's Lucky Guy. He has received the AFI Life Achievement Award in 2002. He received the Stanley Kubrick Britannia Award for Excellence in Film from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts in 2004. In 2014, he received a Kennedy Center Honor, and in 2016, he received a Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Barack Obam, as well as the French Legion of Honor. In 2020, he received the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award.

Early life and family

Thomas Jeffrey Hanks^[9] was born in Concord, California, on July 9, 1956, to hospital worker Janet Marylyn (née Frager)^[12] and itinerant cook Amos Mefford Hanks.His mother was of Portuguese descent (her family's surname was originally "Fraga"),while his father had English ancestry.His parents divorced in 1960. Their three oldest children, Sandra (later Sandra Hanks Benoiton, a writer),Larry (an entomology professor at the University of Illinois at 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's family moved often; by the age of 10, he had lived in 10 different houses. While Hanks's family religious history was Catholic and Mormon, one journalist characterized Hanks's 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." In 1965, his father married Frances Wong, a San Francisco native of Chinese descent. Frances had three children, two of whom lived with Hanks during his high school years. Hanks acted in school plays, including South Pacific, while attending Skyline High School in Oakland, 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."

Personal life

Hanks was married to American actress Samantha Lewes in 1978. They had one son, actor Colin Hanks (born 1977), and one daughter, Elizabeth Hanks (born 1982). Hanks and Lewes divorced in 1987. Lewes died in 2002 from bone cancer.

In 1981, Hanks met actress Rita Wilson on the set of TV comedy Bosom Buddies (1980–1982). They were reunited in 1985 on the set of Volunteers. Wilson is of Greek and Bulgarian descent, and a member of the Greek Orthodox Church. Before marrying her, Hanks converted to her faith.Hanks and Wilson married in 1988 and have two sons. The older, Chester Marlon "Chet" Hanks, released a rap song in 2011 and had recurring roles in Empire and Shameless.Their younger, Truman Theodore, was born in 1995. Hanks lives with his family in Los Angeles, California, and Ketchum, Idaho.

Hanks has three granddaughters: Olivia (b. 2011) and Charlotte (b. 2013), the daughters of Colin, and Micaiah (b. 2016), the daughter of Chet.

Hanks actively attends church. He said, "I must say that when I go to church—and I do go to church—I ponder the mystery. I meditate on the 'why?' of 'why people are as they are' and 'why bad things happen to good people,' and 'why good things happen to bad people'  The mystery is what I think is, almost, the grand unifying theory of all mankind."On October 7, 2013, on the Late Show with David Letterman, Hanks announced that he has Type 2 diabetes.

Despite being a fan of the Oakland Athletics and the Raiders when they were based in Oakland, Hanks stated in April 2017 he would boycott the NFL for two years after the Raiders filed for relocation to Las Vegas.

Since 1984, Hanks has been an avid fan of the English Premier League club Aston Villa.

In November 2019, shortly before the release of A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, a drama film in which Hanks portrays Fred Rogers, he learned through Ancestry.com that he and Rogers were sixth cousins, both descendants of Johannes Meffert (1732–1795), who was born in Schöneck, Hesse and emigrated to the United States in the 18th century, settling in Kentucky and changing his last name to Mefford.

On December 27, 2019, the President of Greece, Prokopis Pavlopoulos, signed an honorary naturalisation order for Hanks and his family, citing their "exceptional services to Greece", thus making him and his immediate family Greek citizens.Tom Hanks, along with his wife Rita Wilson and their children, were conferred honorary citizenship for their role in bringing global attention and appealing for aid, to a devastating wildfire that ripped through the seaside village of Mati, near Athens, in July 2018, which killed more than 100 people. Greece's Interior Minister Takis Theodorikakos said Hanks "showed real interest in the people who suffered from the fire in Mati and promoted this issue in the global media".

On July 26, 2020, the Prime Minister of Greece, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, accompanied with his wife, handed over Greek passports to both Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson.