Celebrity

Tom Hanks Said He Is Asked This Question by Every Journalist

Oscar winner Tom Hanks has dozens of films to his credit and revealed he is often asked this question about his choice of roles.

by Melissa Mitas

Published on March 24, 2021

3 min read

Tom Hanks’ new movies in 2020

Apple TV+ released Greyhound in July 2020. The film was a pet project of Hanks’, who wrote the screenplay from the 1955 novel by C.S. Forester, The Good Shepherd. Hanks played World War II Naval Commander Ernest Krause, who had to lead unit of boats on a treacherous journey across the Atlantic as they are being attacked by German U-boats. Stephen Graham, Rob Morgan, and Elisabeth Shue co-starred.

Hanks commented on Greyhound’s wartime subject matter being somewhat reflective to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.

“We have this movie about the stasis of characters in the middle of something of which they have no idea how long it’s going to last,” Hanks said in July 2020, according to AP News. “We didn’t expect a worldwide pandemic to mirror the theme and the action of the movie.”

For his second film last year, Hanks and director Paul Greengrass joined forces after their 2013 collaboration on Captain Phillips for News of the World. Released in December 2020, the movie is set five years after the American civil war. Hanks portrayed a traveling news reader, Captain Kidd, who stumbles upon a young girl (Helena Zengel) raised by Native Americans. Kidd makes it his mission to bring the child back to her family. Based on the novel by Paulette Jiles, Greengrass steered away from rushing the story and allowed the western film to unfold.

“I wanted a slower tempo rather than pushing all the time, and allowing the characters to find themselves,” he told Variety. “These people helped me find a new direction, different rhythms and styles.”

Tom Hanks’ movies often feature him as ‘Captain’

The two-time Academy Award-winner is clearly comfortable in a commanding role. Portraying captains in several films including Saving Private Ryan, Apollo 13, Sully, and Captain Phillips, Hanks has no problem taking the lead. The actor also seems to favor a certain historical time period when he’s selecting characters to play.

“I’m asked by every journalist, ‘Why do you keep going back to World War II?’” Hanks revealed to AP News when promoting Greyhound. “The answer is, because I come back to that position of the stress upon a human being’s psyche.”

Hanks gave several non-war-related examples of parallels, explaining why he is drawn in by the subject matter.

“It doesn’t have to be a captain, necessarily, on board a destroyer in the middle of the North Atlantic,” he said. “It can be on an 8-year-old kid or a 24-year-old woman or even a 54-year-old man back in the United States wondering, ‘Are we going to live or die? Are we going to be free or not? How long is it going to go on?’ To me, that’s the human condition in every circumstance, even in today in 2020.”

What is Tom Hanks’ new movie coming out in 2022?

Now playing Colonel Tom Parker in the upcoming Elvis Presley biopic, Hanks stars alongside Austin Butler, Olivia DeJonge, and Maggie Gyllenhaal in the Baz Luhrman film. Parker was Presley’s manager throughout the music icon’s entire career.

In March 2020, production was halted due to COVID-19, with Hanks announcing he had contracted the virus. Picking up in September 2020 where cast and crew left off, a great deal of the film is being shot in Queensland, Australia.

“He was both a genius and a scoundrel,” Hanks said of Parker in December 2020 on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. “He was a very disciplined man, but also a guy who you might want to check your wallet to make sure you still have all those fives and 10s.”

The movie is now scheduled for release in June 2022.