“Are you out of your mind?”: the one role Tom Hanks didn’t think he could play
With two Academy Award wins to his name and a back catalogue of acclaimed performances that stretches back four decades, it’s been written right up there on the screen that there isn’t much Tom Hanks can’t do.
Modern cinema’s most indelible everyman may not be particularly well-suited to playing villains when his status as ‘America’s Dad’ makes it incredibly difficult to buy into the idea of him breaking bad, but beyond that, he’s tried his hand at almost every type of character under the sun.
He’s played a child trapped in a man’s body, an astronaut, a castaway, a mulleted professor parading around Europe uncovering a conspiracy, a world-weary soldier, cops, federal agents, private investigators, politicians, a sentient toy, and even himself on a few occasions.
On the surface, bringing a moustachioed pilot to life wouldn’t require Hanks to doubt his own abilities as a performer when the evidence is stacked high enough to underline that he’s one of the very best sround, but his initial reaction to being offered the part wasn’t one of immediate interest.
“When Clint asked me to do it, I had to say, ‘Are you out of your mind?'” he told The Telegraph of his initial conversations with director Clint Eastwood when the legendary actor and filmmaker offered him the chance to lead the line in his 2016 biographical drama, Sully.
Chesley Sullenberger was famously at the controls for the incident dubbed the ‘Miracle on the Hudson’ when he was captaining US Airways Flight 1549 in January 2009. After the aircraft hit a flock of birds that disabled both engines, he pulled off an incredible emergency landing that quickly became the stuff of legend.
“I don’t have white hair; I don’t resemble him,” he remarked, failing to envision himself as Sully. “And he said, ‘It’s because people trust you to do the right thing’. And I thought, ‘How did that come to pass? I’m just an actor’. But you end up becoming this added-up countenance that goes back to every role you ever did. Even movies that failed because you end up taking them forward with you into the next mix.”
Seemingly forgetting that hair dye and wigs are not only things that exist but are items commonplace in the industry he’s dedicated his life to, the fact Hanks had managed to maintain his natural hair colour well into middle age was a bizarre stumbling block to leave him thinking that Sully was a performance out of his reach.
Eastwood simply pointed out what audiences around the world have been agreeing with for years, though: that Hanks is one of the most eminently likeable and trustworthy thespians in the business, and it would hardly be a stretch for cinemagoers to buy into the concept of the Oscar winner playing a character who pulled off an extraordinary feat of aviation.
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