The director Tom Hanks always knew he was destined to work with: “Really great opportunity”
Tom Hanks has lived a life many of us could only dream of. Starring roles in some of the greatest movies ever made, dramatic or comical? Check. A list of awards and honours as long as the Mississippi River? Check. A place in the hearts and minds of the entire world and the nickname ‘America’s Dad’? Check, check, and check again.
In terms of personal dreams, there can’t be much left on Hanks’ list. He won Oscars, worked with some of the finest acting talents across multiple generations, and has embodied some of the greatest cultural and historical figures of all time, from Jim Lovell to Walt Disney, Colonel Tom Parker to Fred Rogers. Hanks is a man who makes his dreams come true, and he did just that when he worked with director Paul Greengrass in 2011.
Hanks starred in Greengrass’ movie Captain Phillips, appearing in the lead role. According to HeyUGuys, the director had been on Hanks’ list of potential collaborators for quite some time. “The first film I saw of Paul’s was Bloody Sunday,” the actor said. “I thought that that film alone because it was a period piece and it was dealing with a very, very dark day with real people and real events I thought, well, I remember a long time ago I flagged Paul Greengrass as someone I’d like to be able to work with. So this was a melding of an awful lot of really great opportunity [sic].”
Undoubtedly, Greengrass is someone many actors would love to work for. The English director was initially a journalist and published a book called Spycatcher, which the British government tried to ban over its inclusion of sensitive material. Bloody Sunday was one of his earliest films and depicted the events of January 30th, 1972 in Derry, Northern Ireland, when British soldiers killed 26 unarmed protesters. He is probably best known for his work on the ‘Bourne’ series, having directed 2007’s The Bourne Ultimatum and 2016’s Jason Bourne, but he’s also made United 93, a depiction of the events aboard one of the planes hijacked on September 11th, and 22 July, a harrowing retelling of the 2011 terrorist attacks in Norway perpetrated by Anders Behring Breivik.
Captain Phillips is another movie based on real events. Richard Phillips (Hanks) is commander of a cargo ship hijacked by pirates off the Horn of Africa. Phillips is taken hostage by Abduwali Muse, who is played by Barkhad Abdi, and this tense relationship between captor and captive is what drives the narrative. The film was incredibly well-received, picking up an Oscar nomination for Best Picture and Best Supporting Actor for Abdi.
When asked, Greengrass revealed that Hanks’ appreciation for him was entirely mutual. “I absolutely think it’s one of the very special Tom Hanks performances,” he graciously admitted, calling his star “the greatest actor giving you the profound insights of being not special.” He clarified this by saying, “he’s not balls out, he’s not a big action hero, he just is a human with ordinary compassions, ordinary insights, and ordinary instincts, and, how he navigates the extraordinary peril that he finds himself in is what the film is really about.”
Greengrass would cast Hanks again in his 2020 film News of the World. Hanks plays Captain Kidd, a Civil War veteran charged with taking Helena Zengel’s Johanna, a young girl taken in and raised by the indigenous Kiowa people, back to her biological family.
