With acting credits in dozens of feature-length projects accrued over the course of four decades, several of which have earned a place among the pantheon of classic cinema, Tom Hanks’ filmography is an enviable body of work. So imagine our surprise to learn the Hollywood veteran believes you could count all the decent entries on a single hand.
“No one knows how a movie is made – though everyone thinks they do,” Tom Hanks said during a recent interview with People.
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“I’ve made a ton of movies – and four of them are pretty good, I think – and I’m still amazed at how films come together. From a flicker of an idea to the flickering image onscreen, the whole process is a miracle.”
“Movie-making is very hard work over a very long period of time that consists of so many moments of joy slapped up against an equal number of feelings of self-loathing. It is the greatest job in the world and the most confounding of labours that I know of.”
Tom Hanks makes zero indication as to which four flicks within his filmography cuts the mustard. But considering he earned Academy Award nominations for Big (1989), Philadelphia (1994), Forrest Gump (1995), Saving Private Ryan (1999), Cast Away (2001), and more recently, A Beautiful Day in the Neighbourhood (2000) – taking home a golden statuette for his performances as gay man Andrew Beckett in Philadelphia; the titular loveable dullard in Forrest Gump – it’s safe to assume he’s probably referring to one of the above.
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Still, this leaves plenty of heaters on the table, ranging from A League of Their Own (1992), Sleepless In Seattle (1993), the Toy Story quadrilogy, Apollo 13 (1995), The Green Mile (1999), Road to Perdition (2002), Catch Me If You Can (2002), The Terminal (2004), Charlie Wilson’s War (2007), Captain Phillips (2013), to Sully (2016); plus there’s the matter of his non-acting efforts in television, i.e. creating + writing + directing + executive producing HBO’s Band of Brothers (2001) alongside Steven Spielberg.
I guess it just goes to show you’ll always be your own worst critic.
