Age, Biography, and Wiki
Tom Hanks was born on July 9, 1956, which makes him 69 years old as of 2025. He is a highly acclaimed actor known for his powerful performances in films like Forrest Gump, Apollo 13, and Saving Private Ryan. Hanks' biography is marked by his early interest in acting, which led him to join the Great Lakes Shakespeare Festival in 1977. His career has been marked by numerous awards, including two Academy Awards for Best Actor. More details about his life can be found on his Wikipedia page.
| Occupation | Film Producer |
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| Date of Birth | 9 July 1956 |
| Age | 68 Years |
| Birth Place | Concord, California, U.S. |
| Horoscope | Cancer |
| Country | U.S |
Height, Weight & Measurements
Tom Hanks stands at a height of about 6 feet (183 cm) and maintains a healthy physique, which is often seen in his films where he undergoes significant physical transformations to fit his roles. His weight varies depending on his role requirements, but he typically weighs around 170-180 pounds (77-82 kg).
In October 2013, on Late Show with David Letterman, Hanks said he has type 2 diabetes. The CBS News medical contributor said significant weight fluctuations for various film roles such as A League of Their Own and Cast Away might have contributed to the diagnosis. In a 2018 interview, Hanks further attributed his condition to a combination of genetics and lifestyle choices. He has since made lifestyle changes to manage his condition, such as maintaining a healthier diet and avoiding film roles that require drastic weight changes.
| Height | 183 cm |
| Weight | 82 kg |
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Dating & Relationship Status
Tom Hanks has been married twice. His first marriage was to Samantha Lewes from 1978 until their divorce in 1987, with whom he had two children, Colin and Elizabeth. In 1988, he married actress Rita Wilson, and they are still together. Hanks and Wilson are known for their enduring relationship and have two sons, Chet and Truman.
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 (who Hanks has portrayed in a film role).
Hanks' 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 age ten, he had lived in ten different houses.
With Nothing in Common (1986)—a story of a young man alienated from his father (Jackie Gleason)—Hanks began to extend himself from comedic roles to dramatic. In an interview with Rolling Stone, Hanks commented on his experience: "It changed my desires about working in movies. Part of it was the nature of the material, what we were trying to say. But besides that, it focused on people's relationships. The story was about a guy and his father, unlike, say, The Money Pit, where the story is really about a guy and his house." In 1987, he had signed an agreement with The Walt Disney Studios where he had starred to a talent pool in an acting/producing pact. After a few more flops and a moderate success with the comedy Dragnet (1987), Hanks' stature in the film industry rose.
Hanks reunited with Zemeckis for Cast Away (2000), playing a marooned FedEx systems analyst. Roger Ebert of The Chicago Sun-Times wrote: "Hanks proves here again what an effective actor he is, never straining for an effect, always persuasive even in this unlikely situation, winning our sympathy with his eyes and his body language when there's no one else on the screen." Hanks co-directed and produced the Emmy Award-winning HBO miniseries Band of Brothers (2001). He also appeared in the September 11 television special America: A Tribute to Heroes and the documentary Rescued From the Closet. In 2002, he teamed up with Sam Mendes for Road to Perdition, an adaptation of the adaptation of Max Allan Collins's and Richard Piers Rayner's comics, in which he played an anti-hero role as a hitman on the run with his son. Hanks reunited with Spielberg, starring opposite Leonardo DiCaprio in Catch Me If You Can (2002), based on the true story of conman Frank Abagnale, Jr. Hanks and his wife Rita Wilson produced My Big Fat Greek Wedding (2002). In August 2007, Hanks, along with co-producers Wilson and Gary Goetzman and writer and star Nia Vardalos, initiated a legal action against the production company Gold Circle Films for their share of profits from the movie. At the age of 45, Hanks became the youngest-ever recipient of the American Film Institute's Life Achievement Award on June 12, 2002.
Hanks did voice work for Ken Burns's documentary The War (2007), reading excerpts from World War II-era columns by Al McIntosh. Hanks voiced himself in The Simpsons Movie (2007), in which he appeared in an announcement claiming that the U.S. government has lost its credibility and is hence buying some of his. He also made an appearance in the credits, expressing a desire to be left alone when he is out in public. He starred in Mike Nichols's Charlie Wilson's War (2007) as Democratic Texas Congressman Charles Wilson. In the comedy-drama film The Great Buck Howard (2008), Hanks played the on-screen father of a young man (played by Hanks' real-life son Colin) who chooses to work as road manager for a fading mentalist (John Malkovich). His character was less than thrilled about his son's career decision. In the same year, he executive produced the musical comedy Mamma Mia! and the miniseries John Adams.
On December 27, 2019, the President of Greece, Prokopis Pavlopoulos, signed an honorary naturalization order for Hanks and his family, citing their "exceptional services to Greece", thus making him and his immediate family Greek citizens. Hanks, along with Wilson and their children, were conferred honorary citizenship for their role in bringing global attention and appealing for aid after 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". In July 2020, Hanks and Wilson were photographed with their Greek passports alongside the Prime Minister of Greece, Kyriakos Mitsotakis and his wife.
Hanks is a collector of manual typewriters and uses them almost daily. In August 2014, Hanks released Hanx Writer, an iOS app meant to emulate the experience of using a typewriter; within days the free app reached number one on the App Store. After contracting and recovering from a COVID-19 infection early in the pandemic, Hanks and his wife donated their blood antibodies for virus research. Hanks is an ordained minister, and on March 24, 2022, CBS News reported that he had recently officiated a wedding in Pittsburgh. In 2023, Hanks founded Hanx for the Troops, a coffee company that supports veterans and military families through a portion of its profits and various initiatives.
| Parents | |
| Husband | Samantha Lewes (m. 1978-1987) Rita Wilson (m. 1988) |
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Net Worth and Salary
As of 2025, Tom Hanks' net worth is estimated to be between $400 million and $571.94 million, depending on the source. His salary per movie is typically around $25 million, though he often earns significantly more due to performance-based bonuses. For example, his earnings from Forrest Gump were estimated to be around $60 million.
Hanks' next endeavor was Angels & Demons (2009). Its April 11, 2007, announcement revealed that Hanks would reprise his role as Robert Langdon, and that he would reportedly receive the highest salary ever for an actor. The following day he made his 10th appearance on NBC's Saturday Night Live, impersonating himself for the Celebrity Jeopardy sketch. Hanks produced Spike Jonze's Where The Wild Things Are (2009), based on the children's book by Maurice Sendak.
Career, Business, and Investments
Tom Hanks' career spans over four decades, with notable films like Forrest Gump, Cast Away, and Saving Private Ryan. He is also a successful producer, having produced projects like Band of Brothers and The Pacific. Hanks has ventured into directing and writing, further diversifying his career. In addition to acting, he has invested significantly in real estate and has been involved in various business ventures, contributing to his substantial wealth.
His breakthrough television role was a co-lead in the ABC sitcom Bosom Buddies (1980–1982). He has hosted Saturday Night Live ten times and launched a production company, Playtone, which has produced various limited series and television movies, including From the Earth to the Moon (1998), Band of Brothers, John Adams (2008), The Pacific, Game Change (2012), and Olive Kitteridge (2015). He made his Broadway debut in Nora Ephron's Lucky Guy (2013), earning a nomination for the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play.
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 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 (1982). 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 television for long.' I knew he'd be a movie star in two years."
The broad success of the fantasy comedy Big (1988) established Hanks as a major Hollywood talent, both as a box office draw and within the industry as an actor. For his performance in the film, Hanks earned his first nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actor. Big was followed later that year by Punchline, in which he and Sally Field co-starred as struggling comedians. Hanks then suffered a run of box-office underperformers: The 'Burbs (1989), Joe Versus the Volcano (1990) and The Bonfire of the Vanities (1990). In the last, he portrayed a greedy Wall Street figure who gets enmeshed in a hit-and-run accident. Turner & Hooch (1989) was Hanks' only financially successful film of the period.
Sleepless in Seattle is a romantic comedy about a widower who finds true love over the radio airwaves. Hanks co-starred with Meg Ryan. Richard Schickel of TIME called his performance "charming", and most critics agreed that Hanks' portrayal ensured him a place among the premier romantic-comedy stars of his generation. In Philadelphia, he played a gay lawyer with AIDS who sues his firm for discrimination. Hanks lost 35 lb and thinned his hair in order to appear sickly for the role. In a review for People, Leah Rozen stated, "Above all, credit for Philadelphia's success belongs to Hanks, who makes sure that he plays a character, not a saint. He is flat-out terrific, giving a deeply felt, carefully nuanced performance that deserves an Oscar." Hanks won the 1993 Academy Award for Best Actor for his role in Philadelphia. During his acceptance speech, he revealed that two people with whom he was close, his high school drama teacher Rawley Farnsworth and his former classmate John Gilkerson, were gay.
Hanks followed Philadelphia with Robert Zemeckis's Forrest Gump (1994), playing the title character, a man with an IQ of 75 who happens to find himself involved with some of the major events in recent American history. It grossed a worldwide total of over $600 million. Hanks remarked, "When I read the script for Gump, I saw it as one of those kind of grand, hopeful movies that the audience can go to and feel ... some hope for their lot and their position in life ... I got that from the movies a hundred million times when I was a kid. I still do." Hanks won his second Best Actor Academy Award for his role in Forrest Gump, becoming only the second actor to have accomplished the feat of winning consecutive Best Actor Oscars. (Spencer Tracy was the first, winning in 1937 and ‘38 for Captains Courageous and Boys Town. Hanks and Tracy were the same age at the time they received their Academy Awards: 37 years old when they won their first and 38 when they won their second.)
Hanks had two films released in 2020. Hanks starred in Greyhound, a war film which he also wrote the screenplay for. Initially set to be theatrically released in June 2020 by Sony Pictures, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, distribution rights to the film were bought by Apple TV+, where it was released in July 2020. He reunited with Paul Greengrass for the Western News of the World. David Rooney of The Hollywood Reporter praised Hanks' performance: "Hanks has built a career out of playing thoroughly decent men, so his casting here is entirely to type. But the soulfulness and sorrow, the innate compassion that ripple through his characterization make this an enormously pleasurable performance to watch, with new depths of both kindness and regret that keep revealing themselves."
In Hanks' career as an actor and producer, he has received many award nominations. Hanks has received six Academy Award nominations including two consecutive wins for Best Actor for Philadelphia and Forrest Gump in 1993 and 1994 respectively. Hanks also received a Tony Award nomination for Best Actor in a Play for his performance in Nora Ephron's play Lucky Guy in 2013. Hanks has also received 12 Primetime Emmy Award nominations for his work on television which includes 7 wins for his work as a producer on various limited series and television films including From the Earth to the Moon (1998), Band of Brothers (2002), John Adams (2008), The Pacific (2010), Game Change (2012), and Olive Kitteridge (2015).
* 2016: French Legion of Honor, at the rank of Chevalier (Knight), for his presentation of World War II and support of World War II veterans, along with Tom Brokaw, retired NBC anchor, and Gordon H. Mueller, president and co-founder of the National WWII Museum, New Orleans.
A proponent of environmentalism, Hanks is an investor in electric vehicles and owns a Toyota RAV4 EV and the first production AC Propulsion eBox. He was a lessee of an EV1 before it was recalled, as chronicled in the documentary Who Killed the Electric Car? He was on the waiting list for an Aptera2 Series. Hanks serves as campaign chair of the Hidden Heroes Campaign of the Elizabeth Dole Foundation. The stated mission of the campaign is to inspire a national movement to more effectively support the military and veteran caregivers.
In June 2006, Hanks was inducted as an honorary member of the United States Army Rangers Hall of Fame for his accurate portrayal of a captain in the movie Saving Private Ryan; Hanks, who was unable to attend the induction ceremony, was the first actor to receive such an honor. In addition to his role in Saving Private Ryan, Hanks was cited for serving as the national spokesperson for the World War II Memorial Campaign, for being the honorary chairperson of the D-Day Museum Capital Campaign, and for his role in writing and helping to produce the Emmy Award-winning miniseries, Band of Brothers. On March 10, 2008, Hanks was on hand at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame to induct The Dave Clark Five.
Social Network
Tom Hanks is active on social media platforms, though he prefers to keep a low profile. He occasionally shares updates about his projects or personal life, maintaining a connection with his fans.
Hanks rose to fame with leading roles in comedies: Splash (1984), The Money Pit (1986), Big (1988), and A League of Their Own (1992). He won two consecutive Academy Awards for Best Actor, playing a gay lawyer suffering from AIDS in Philadelphia (1993), then the title character in Forrest Gump (1994). Hanks has collaborated with 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)—and three World War II-themed miniseries: Band of Brothers (2001), The Pacific (2010), and Masters of the Air (2024). He has also frequently collaborated with directors Ron Howard, Nora Ephron, and Robert Zemeckis.
Hanks cemented his film stardom with lead roles in 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), Cloud Atlas (2012), and News of the World (2020); 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 Elvis (2022). He played the title character in the Robert Langdon series (2006–2016) and voiced Sheriff Woody in the Toy Story franchise (1995–present) and multiple roles in The Polar Express (2004). Hanks directed and acted in That Thing You Do! (1996) and Larry Crowne (2011).
Having grown up in the Bay Area, Hanks says that some of his first movie memories were seeing movies in the Alameda Theatre. 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 that he would have rather won 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."
Hanks reunited with Ron Howard to play astronaut and commander Jim Lovell in Apollo 13 (1995). Critics generally applauded the film and the performances of the entire cast, which included Kevin Bacon, Bill Paxton, Gary Sinise, Ed Harris and Kathleen Quinlan. The movie earned nine Academy Award nominations, winning two. Hanks also starred in Pixar's Toy Story (1995) as the voice of Sheriff Woody. Hanks made his directing debut with That Thing You Do! (1996), about a 1960s pop group; he also played the role of a music producer in the film. Hanks and producer Gary Goetzman went on to create Playtone, a record and film production company named after the record company in the film.
His next project was no less expensive. For Saving Private Ryan (1998), he worked with Steven Spielberg to make a film about a search through war-torn France after D-Day to bring home a soldier. It earned the praise and respect of the film community, critics and the general public. Hailed as one of the finest war films ever made, it earned Spielberg his second Academy Award for direction, and Hanks another Best Actor nomination. Later that year, Hanks re-teamed with Ephron and Ryan for You've Got Mail, a remake of Ernst Lubitsch's The Shop Around the Corner (1940). He starred in Frank Darabont's The Green Mile (1999), based on the novel of the same name by Stephen King. He reprised the role of Woody in Toy Story 2 (1999).
In 2004, he appeared in three films: The Coen brothers' The Ladykillers, Spielberg's The Terminal and Zemeckis' The Polar Express, a family film for which Hanks played multiple motion capture roles. In a USA Weekend interview, Hanks discussed how he chooses projects: "[Since] A League of Their Own, it can't be just another movie for me. It has to get me going somehow ... There has to be some all-encompassing desire or feeling about wanting to do that particular movie. I'd like to assume that I'm willing to go down any avenue in order to do it right". In August 2005, Hanks was voted in as vice president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Hanks next starred in The Da Vinci Code (2006), which grossed over US$750 million worldwide. In 2006, Hanks topped a 1,500-strong list of "most trusted celebrities" compiled by Forbes magazine. He produced the animated children's movie The Ant Bully and Starter for Ten, a comedy about working-class students attempting to win on University Challenge.
Hanks reprised his role of Woody in Toy Story 3 (2010) after he, Tim Allen and John Ratzenberger were invited to a movie theater to see a complete story reel of the movie. The film went on to become the highest-grossing animated film at the time. He executive produced the miniseries The Pacific (2010). In 2011, he directed and starred opposite Julia Roberts in the title role in the romantic comedy Larry Crowne. The movie received poor reviews, with only 35% of the 175 Rotten Tomatoes reviews giving it high ratings. Also in 2011, he starred in the drama Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. In 2012, he voiced the character Cleveland Carr for a web series he created, Electric City. He played multiple parts in Cloud Atlas (2012), based on the novel of the same name by David Mitchell, and was executive producer of the miniseries Game Change.
In 2014, Hanks' short story "Alan Bean Plus Four" was published in The New Yorker. Revolving around four friends who make a voyage to the moon, the short story is titled after the Apollo 12 astronaut Alan Bean. Slate magazine's Katy Waldman found his first published short story "mediocre", writing that "Hanks' shopworn ideas about technology might have yet sung if they hadn't been wrapped in too-clever lit mag-ese". In an interview with The New Yorker, Hanks said he has always been fascinated by space. He told the magazine that he built plastic models of rockets when he was a child and watched live broadcasts of space missions back in the 1960s.
In March 2015, Hanks appeared in the music video for Carly Rae Jepsen's "I Really Like You", lip-syncing most of the song's lyrics as he goes through his daily routine. His next film was Steven Spielberg's Bridge of Spies (2015), in which he played lawyer James B. Donovan, who negotiated for the release of pilot Francis Gary Powers by the Soviet Union in exchange for KGB spy Rudolf Abel. In April 2016, Hanks starred as Alan Clay in the comedy-drama A Hologram for the King, an adaptation of the 2012 novel of the same name. It is the second time he was directed by Tom Tykwer after Cloud Atlas.
Hanks reprised his role as Sheriff Woody in Pixar's Toy Story 4 (2019). Hanks portrayed Fred Rogers in Marielle Heller's biographical film A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (2019), for which he was nominated for his first Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.
Hanks is often compared to James Stewart, and has also frequently been referred to as "America's Dad". In 2013, when he was starring in Nora Ephron's Lucky Guy on Broadway, he had crowds of 300 fans waiting for a glimpse of him after every performance. This is the highest number of expectant fans post-show of any Broadway performance.
Hanks was interviewed five times on WHYY-FM by Terry Gross on the radio show Fresh Air in Philadelphia. Topics included two segments on his lead role in Captain Phillips, a movie about the real life story of a ship's captain hijacked by Somali pirates. Two interviews are about the 12 part miniseries From Earth to the Moon, for which Hanks was executive producer and which was nominated for 17 Emmy Awards. The last interview segment comprises anecdotes shared by Hanks about his acting career. Roger Ebert wrote "of actors who are not 'bigger than life,' but somehow just like life—people who we feel we know and understand, and are comfortable with. We sense that these actors embody not our fantasies, but our lives. Watching them we feel congratulated, because we are watching ourselves. They reassure us that in our ordinariness we also have a kind of importance. The actors who can do that—Buster Keaton, Spencer Tracy, James Stewart, Henry Fonda, Robert Duvall, Gene Hackman, and Tom Hanks, occupy a special category... The central triumph of Tom Hanks as a movie actor is that, most of the time, we believe he thinks a lot like us, and does more or less what we would do, but that he somehow does it on a larger or more ennobling scale. It is the James Stewart quality. But few actors can obtain it; with most, you see their egos peeking through, or you catch them trying too hard. The camera is a lie detector, and Hanks must be a fundamentally good person to play such roles—either that, or he is an even better actor than we think."
Education
Tom Hanks attended Chabot College in Hayward, California, before transferring to California State University, Sacramento. He studied theater arts but did not graduate, as he was drawn to acting and began his career in the theater.
Hanks' family's religious history was Catholic and Mormon. 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.
Hanks made a guest appearance on a 1982 episode of Happy Days ("A Case of Revenge", in which he played a disgruntled former classmate of Fonzie) where he met writers Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel who were writing the film Splash (1984), a romantic comedy fantasy about a mermaid who falls in love with a human, to be directed by former Happy Days star Ron Howard. Ganz and Mandel suggested Howard consider Hanks for the film. At first, Howard considered Hanks for the role of the main character's wisecracking brother, a role that eventually went to John Candy. Instead, Hanks landed the lead role in Splash, which went on to become a surprise box office hit, grossing more than US$69 million. He had a sizable hit with the sex comedy Bachelor Party, also in 1984. In 1983–84, Hanks made three guest appearances on Family Ties as Elyse Keaton's alcoholic brother Ned Donnelly.
