The movie that almost broke Tom Hanks for good: “The light went out”
We often think of movie stars as living the high life, their pockets lined thick with cash as they swan from party to party, sweeping awards and dishing facts about themselves in exclusive interviews. Sure, it’s sometimes like this, but it can also be taxing, and Tom Hanks once almost drove himself to breaking point for the sake of a role.
Sometimes actors take their preparation for a movie a little too seriously, completely changing their appearance or immersing themselves in in-depth research to accurately get themselves into someone else’s mindset. When the character starts to bleed into an actor’s real life, though, it can be dangerous if it becomes all-consuming, which was the case for Hanks when he signed up for Cast Away.
Directed by Robert Zemeckis, who also worked with Hanks on the Oscar-winning hit Forrest Gump a few years prior, the movie saw the actor change his diet to get himself looking more suited for the role, and this proved to be detrimental to his well-being.
In the film, his character, Chuck, is marooned on an island alone for four years following a plane crash, and in this time, he undergoes a rather stark physical transformation. Starting out a little overweight, his character naturally sheds some pounds once he’s stuck on the island, but he comes to build some sizable muscles, and Hanks had to mirror this metamorphosis himself.
To do so, the film had a year-long break in filming, and during this time Hanks had to work on his body, although this was slightly derailed when he dislocated his shoulder, which wrote him off for over a month.
In a bizarre way, Zemeckis believes this helped Hanks’ performance, telling The Oklahoman, “A kind of life spark was out of Tom’s eyes, which was perfect because of what’s happened to Chuck.” Now, there was something a little different about the new, slimmer Hanks.
“He wasn’t the same. He wasn’t this Tom,” he said. “And I didn’t know what to say because I didn’t know whether it was because he was just so miserable, because he starved himself. And I think that probably had a lot to do with it. Or he was in character, or a combination of the both.”
Hanks’ diet as Chuck wasn’t exactly very exciting, and you can’t blame him for becoming incredibly miserable – you’d be too if you were deprived of a good meal. “He was just not a happy camper. The light went out. It’s like he was right on the edge of, I think, becoming depressed because he was depriving himself. He was doing this with a doctor and everything, but he was eating, literally, raw carrots. He would walk around with a little bag of celery and carrots,” Zemecki added.
Cast Away was pretty well-received, and Hanks even earned yet another Academy Award nomination for his performance. He lost out to Russell Crowe in Gladiator, but that didn’t make his preparation for the role useless – Hanks had proved himself as one of Hollywood’s most dedicated actors.
