Speaker
Tom Hanks
Appearances over time
2 episodes
Episodes
2
Podcasts
Quotes & moments
Pixar threw out approximately 80% of the original Toy Story during production, deciding there was something intrinsically wrong with its DNA before starting over.
Before Bosom Buddies, Tom Hanks spent a full year as a stage actor earning less than $10,000 while married with a child.
Each Toy Story film takes about 2.5 years of Tom Hanks's involvement, with sessions roughly every 6 months.
Tom Hanks became an Aston Villa fan during his first UK press junket in 1985 after seeing the name on a BBC football scoreboard and thinking it sounded Mediterranean.
Booking Bosom Buddies gave Tom Hanks more money in two weeks than he had earned in an entire year as a stage actor.
Aston Villa last won a major European trophy in 1982, just before Tom Hanks became a fan.
The Omaha Beach sequence in Saving Private Ryan was filmed at County Wexford, Ireland, using 500 actual members of the Irish Army as extras.
Tom Hanks argues the 1990s may have been the last great decade of cinema, combining artistic daring with matching economics, before sequels and franchises took over.
The volleyball named Wilson in Cast Away was a deliberate tribute to Tom Hanks's wife Rita Wilson, written by screenwriter Bill Broyles.
Tom Hanks told Keir Dullea — star of 2001: A Space Odyssey — that he had seen the film 119 times and always found something new.
Tom Hanks and screenwriter Bill Broyles began discussing Cast Away approximately six years before cameras rolled.
Tom Hanks turned 27 on the last day of shooting Splash in the Bahamas; the wrap cake was amended with toothpaste-icing to wish him happy birthday.
Fred Rogers told researchers that prayer only takes 3 words — 'Thank you, God' — a philosophy Tom Hanks adopted after playing Rogers on screen.
When Tom Hanks was filming Bosom Buddies around 1980, a VHS player cost approximately $4,000, making home video an extreme luxury.
Tom Hanks said there is one specific moment in Cast Away — a turnaround shot of him returning Kelly's watch — where he feels he didn't achieve authenticity and leaves the room if the scene comes on.
Every adult in Hanks's childhood spoke about World War II as the great dividing line of their lives — before, during, and after, like a Black Plague walking among them. Add the moral clarity that the bad guys lost, and you have a storytelling well he keeps returning to.
The Omaha Beach sequence was filmed in County Wexford, Ireland, with 500 actual Irish Army soldiers. Special effects crews planted hidden air mortars under tiny flags on the sand — then removed the flags. Hanks describes wandering blind, wet, cold, while stuntmen caught fire and flew 40 feet into the air.
While working as a hotel bellman in Oakland at age 18, Hanks struck up a conversation with a dry cleaner named Mike who casually mentioned taking a vacation every June — to Normandy, to visit the graves of the buddies who didn't make it home from D-Day.
At the Great Lakes Shakespeare Festival, director Dan Sullivan exploded at a hungover, post-opening-night cast: show up on time, know your lines, have an idea. Hanks, 20 years old and barely a spear-carrier, decided that day that those three rules would define his entire career.
Cast Away took six years from the first conversation between Hanks and screenwriter Bill Broyles to cameras rolling. Broyles came up with the volleyball and named it Wilson as a tribute to Hanks's wife Rita Wilson — a detail Hanks revealed nearly broke Sean Hayes.
In the era when Hanks was churning out comedies, a $15 million budget and a comedy label was essentially a license to print money. The genre was dominated by Second City and SNL alumni, and Hanks describes his films as 'doing imitations of other people's funny movies' — yet every single daily screening was called the funniest movie ever made.
In 1980, a VHS player cost $4,000 and only the very wealthy had one. Within two years, the price dropped enough to trigger mass adoption. Hanks argues the current streaming transition is no different — the audience never cared where they watched; only the industry did.
Completely stoned, Sean Hayes convinced a friend who had just bought a new Sony DVD player that it was voice-activated. The friend earnestly said 'Cast Away' into the machine — twice — while Hayes suffocated with laughter behind him.
During a nearly 3-hour outdoor Shakespeare performance at the VA Center in Los Angeles, a man had a medical episode. When Hanks saw a woman picking up her purse to leave, he sprinted onstage and started improvising Shakespearean insults to shame the audience into staying.
Hanks has directed two feature films and several miniseries episodes, but concludes that true directors are born into the belief that it's the greatest job in the world. He is not. He also believes every director should be required to act, and every actor should produce — just to understand how hard the other job is.
Before booking Bosom Buddies, Hanks spent a full year as a Shakespearean actor earning less than $10,000, married with a kid. Two weeks on the show matched that annual salary. He and co-star Peter Scolari were so comfortable goofing off that the director had to yell at them through the intercom from the control booth.
Hanks dismisses the idea that streaming removes pressure from filmmakers. Movies are binary — zero or one, they work or they don't — and no marketing, interview, or distribution strategy changes that fundamental truth. The audience doesn't care where they see it; the business does.
In his mid-30s, Hanks told his CAA agent he wanted to play grown-ups who had been through bitter compromise. That declaration marked the end of the comedy era and the beginning of Philadelphia, Forrest Gump, and everything that followed.
Hanks draws a sharp line between himself and real producers: producers spend all day convincing people to do things they don't want to do, or telling people they won't get what they want. Hanks just says yes to everything.
Pixar threw out 80% of the original Toy Story because the DNA was fundamentally wrong. Starting over from scratch — changing the entire Woody-Buzz dynamic — was the decision that made the franchise what it became.
Analysis
What they talk about
- Arts 59%
- Business 14%
- History 9%
- Education 5%
- Religion & Spirituality 5%
- Society & Culture 4%
- Sports 4%
Connections
Shows they appear on and people they share episodes with. Drag to explore.
