The “honest” actor that changed Steven Spielberg’s life
Working with Steven Spielberg is a dream for virtually any actor working today; such is the towering legacy the director has cultivated through almost 50 years of greatness.
Whether it’s a blockbuster painted on the biggest canvas, an intimate character-driven drama, an all-singing and all-dancing musical spectacular, a fleet-footed comedy, or a powerful dramatisation of real-life events, Spielberg has seen and done it all during his career.
There’s nobody in the history of cinema who’s been able to bounce between serious fare and crowd-pleasing populism so regularly and done both so well, as evidenced by the fact that not only does Spielberg have three Academy Award wins from 23 nominations, but he’s also the highest-grossing director of all time and the only one to see their filmography accrue $10 billion at the box office.
Collaborating with Spielberg can be a life-changing experience for a performer, but when the shoe has been placed on the other foot, the filmmaker only named two actors he’s worked with that had the same effect on him, although they’re both among the finest of their generation.
“Everybody has a different technique and I quite frankly don’t care how anybody gets to where they need to go,” he explained to the Irish Examiner. “But I will say that I think Daniel Day-Lewis and Tom Hanks are the two actors who I have had life-changing experiences with as a director.”
He only worked with Day-Lewis once on Lincoln, but Hanks is an entirely different story. As well as their partnerships on Saving Private Ryan, Catch Me If You Can, The Terminal, Bridge of Spies, and The Post, Spielberg produced The Money Pit and Joe Versus the Volcano, while they co-created Band of Brothers and served as co-executive producers on spiritual successors The Pacific and Masters of the Air.
As for what makes Hanks stand out as a life-changing collaborator, Spielberg put it down to his honesty. “One of the happiest experiences I’ve ever had with Tom was on this last film, Bridge of Spies, and it’s simply because Tom is an honest actor, which means that he doesn’t have to act,” he said. “If he understands the character, he exists in clothing and in the persona of that character without having to work very hard.”
Their movies have covered unforgettable war epics, biographical crime stories, light-hearted dramedies, gripping espionage tales, and hard-hitting newsroom dramas, highlighting how Spielberg and Hanks are capable of making magic regardless of which genre they’re putting their heads together and partnering on.
The star changed Spielberg’s life as a result, and it wouldn’t be a stretch of the imagination to call Hanks the filmmaker’s most notable recurring on-screen collaborator, and not just because he’s been in more of his films than anybody else.
