The director who shares a brain with Tom Hanks: “We were both a little nervous”
Tom Hanks is one of the most ‘Hollywood’ men to have ever graced screens. From the beginning of his career in the 1980s, he was able to charm people with his loveable performances in movies like Big and Splash before going on to find further acclaim with hits like Forrest Gump and Philadelphia, becoming a two-time Oscar winning star.
The legendary actor possesses that kind of star power which causes audiences to flock to his films. Inoffensive and typically playing friendly heroic characters, Hanks has been able to maintain a steady place in the public eye, starring in many blockbuster movies and box office smashes. He had an incredibly impressive decade in the 1990s, leading movies like Sleepless in Seattle, Apollo 13, Toy Story and Toy Story 2, You’ve Got Mail, and The Green Mile – all to significant praise.
The decade also marked his first collaboration with Steven Spielberg, who directed Hanks in 1998’s Saving Private Ryan, which remains one of the most popular films of the era and one of the most acclaimed war movies. In many ways, you could call Spielberg the directorial equivalent to Hanks as an actor. Both are attracted to big-budget movies that can reach a diverse audience by being accessible and fairly easy to digest. Additionally, both make the kinds of films that champion a sense of American heroism, which is evident in Saving Private Ryan.
In fact, Spielberg thinks the pair are very similar himself, telling The DiamondBack, “When I first made my first movie with Tom as a director, Saving Private Ryan, we were both a little bit nervous, but we worked together almost like we were sharing a brain.”
It’s not exactly far-fetched to compare the two – they’ve gone on to work with each other on four other films and three television shows – suggesting that they’re perhaps each other’s cinematic soulmates. The filmmaker continued, “It’s been that way on the next three films following Saving Private Ryan and one of the happiest experiences I’ve ever had was with Tom was on this last film, Bridge of Spies and it’s simply because, you know, Tom is an honest actor which means that he doesn’t have to act.”
“If he understands the character he exists in clothing and in the persona of that character without having to, without having to work very hard,” Spielberg continued, praising Hanks’ innate skill for getting into the mind of a character and executing what is required of him perfectly.
The pair have worked together on Catch Me If You Can, The Terminal, The Post, Band of Brothers, The Pacific, and most recently Masters of the Air, alongside the aforementioned films, seemingly understanding what they need from one another. Hanks has always spoken highly of the filmmaker, once telling Conan O’Brien: “We don’t have to do anything except inhabit the space. Because Steven is telling the story from the cinematic perspective, where the camera is and what he’s doing [with it], it’s not even going to matter.”
