Tom Hanks Once Returned His Oscars Back to the Academy
Actor Tom Hanks has accomplished much in his long career as an actor, including winning an Academy Award.
But at one point, the Oscar-winner shared he had to give the awards back when he noticed a problem.
How many Oscars does Tom Hanks have?
Tom Hanks is one of the few Oscar-winners who’s taken home more than one Academy Award. He first won the Oscar for Best Actor in 1994 for his starring role in Philadelphia. He then repeated this success in 1995 for Forrest Gump.
Ironically for Gump, he was occasionally concerned that his role wouldn’t resonate with the audience the way he wanted it to. At least when it came to the bench scene.
“I will tell you, in Forrest Gump, all the stuff that we shot on the park bench in Savannah, Georgia, we were just shooting fodder for a possible narrative piece of it,” he once said on the Cinemablend podcast. “And I said to Bob [Zemeckis], ‘Is anyone going to care about this nut sitting on a [bench]? What is this? No one knows what’s in this [box].'”
Why Tom Hanks returned his Oscars
After years of holding on to his Oscars, Hanks eventually gave them back. This was because of the wear and tear the awards experienced over the years.
“My Oscars are a little old. When you get one, the sweat in your hands have a certain level of acidity or some alkaline so when you grab them…that sweat and the chemicals in your body begin to immediately corrode the gold,” Hanks once said according to Contact Music.
Hanks decided to send the Oscars back to the Academy to repair the damages. But the Academy had bad news for the Green Mile star.
“I got the word back…they said they were in such bad shape, they would be happy to just give me replacements,” he remembered.
But Hanks didn’t like the idea of replacing his Oscars.
“They got serial numbers on them..so they’re going to try and replate them, and I’m never gonna touch these things again, I won’t put my hands on them or let anybody else, ‘cause everybody comes to my house and goes, ‘Can I hold your Oscar?’ ‘No, no, no, don’t hold my Oscars,'” he said.
Tom Hanks once called the Academy Awards a card game
Forrest Gump and Philadelphia weren’t the only times Hanks was nominated for an Oscar. He’d been a candidate for several Oscar nominations since Forrest Gump, but hasn’t yet picked up a third win. Some in the industry thought Hanks would win his third Oscar for starring in Cast Away. It didn’t hurt that the movie saw him re-teaming with his Forrest Gump director Robert Zemeckis.
Speaking to Oprah, even the media mogul thought Hanks was guaranteed to pick up a win for his movie Cast Away. But Hanks doubted he’d win that year given the unpredictability of the awards ceremony.
“I know how the Academy Awards works: It’s a card game, and I’m in the toss-up category,” he said.
Russell Crowe would end up walking away with the Oscar for Best Actor thanks to his role in Gladiator.
