Tom Hanks’ near-death experience led to one of Harrison Ford’s best performances
If it weren’t for Tom Hanks almost dying, then Harrison Ford wouldn’t have been given the opportunity to deliver one of the most underrated performances of his career. Hollywood can be a strange old place, with one hand regularly feeding the other in the most unexpected of circumstances.
Many of the industry’s most notable actors are known for going to great lengths in order to do justice to the characters they play, but two-time Academy Award winner Hanks discovered the hard way that there’s only so far somebody can push their body in the name of art before it starts to turn against them.
The star had already worked wonders with director Robert Zemeckis on awards season bothered Forrest Gump, and their re-teaming on Cast Away promised similar levels of fireworks. The downside – at least for Hanks and his physician – is that the role of Chuck Noland necessitated some yo-yo-ing weight fluctuations.
To convince as a stranded FedEx employee cast adrift and left to his own devices for years on a deserted island, the leading man gained 50 pounds on top of his usual weight before shooting had even started in an effort to convey his transformation and withering over a number of years as even more startling, dramatic, and compelling.
Once the scenes of regular-sized Hanks had been captured, Cast Away was shut down for four months so that he could plummet down to the emaciated scale required for the volleyball bromance that unfolded during his lengthy period of isolation. Opting to make hay while the sun shined, Zemeckis utilised the Cast Away crew to shoot Ford and Michelle Pfeiffer’s supernatural psychological thriller What Lies Beneath during their downtime before Hanks ended up coming perilously close to making the ultimate sacrifice in the name of cinema when the band got back together.
After suffering a gash on his leg, Hanks bravely soldiered on, at least until he realised something very serious was afoot. “I got an infection from a cut, and it was eating its way through my leg,” he admitted. “I didn’t know it; I just thought I had a sore.” After catching wind of his gnarly injury, a doctor instructed Hanks that he needed to be hospitalised before the infection spread, poisoned his blood, and killed him.
Casually remarking how “we had to shut down for three weeks while my skin reformed,” Cast Away was put on pause once again so that Hanks didn’t end up succumbing to a flesh-eating infection that shuffled him off his mortal coil. Once he was given the all-clear, Zemeckis’ survival drama crossed the finish line, wrapped filming with a two-legged and perfectly healthy Hanks, and ultimately secured him an Oscar nomination for ‘Best Actor’, all while Ford got to enjoy a rare villainous turn in What Lies Beneath into the bargain.
