“Made me want to become an actor”: the role Tom Hanks has always dreamed of playing
For many actors, William Shakespeare is their bread and butter. Theatre can be the best place for a budding star to begin their career; it’s where they can best hone their skills by having no choice but to perform in front of a live audience, remembering lengthy chunks of dialogue without the benefit of multiple takes and a post-production team’s editing skills.
While Tom Hanks might be best known for being a Hollywood icon, having starred in many popular films across several decades – spanning everything from Toy Story and Forrest Gump to Saving Private Ryan and The Polar Express – the actor actually got his start on the stage. In fact, Hanks’ first credited theatre appearance dates back to a 1977 production of Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew during his stint of performing at Lakewood Civic Auditorium.
From there, he appeared in various other Shakespeare adaptations, including Hamlet, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, King John, and Twelfth Night. Evidently enjoying the Bard’s comedies as much as his tragedies and historical plays, Hanks was able to embody a range of iconic characters during this formative time in his life, giving him the preparation he needed for a very successful career under the spotlight. By the following decade, he was the star of many popular movies on the silver screen, most notably Splash, Big, and Dragnet, before winning multiple Oscars over the coming years.
Since then, Hanks has not returned to Shakespeare on either the stage or screen, but there is one role conjured up by the English playwright that the actor would love to play at some point. He expressed his love for Shakespeare during a fundraising event in which he read The Two Gentlemen Of Verona alongside his wife Rita Wilson and Beatle Paul McCartney, where he revealed his dream part.
“I would love to play Iago. I like the plays that end with the stage littered with dead bodies,” he said, referring to the antagonist from Othello. Written in the early 1600s, the tragedy sees Iago attempt to convince Othello that his wife, Desdemona, is being unfaithful. While Hanks has frequently played the hero throughout his tenure as one of America’s most popular actors, the star is fascinated by the prospect of playing the manipulative villain.
In another interview, Hanks revealed that the ‘I am not what I am’ monologue was a huge influence on him when he started acting. “When I first heard that, it just sent me right through the stratosphere and made me want to become an actor.”
With the level of influence that Hanks has over Hollywood – and his own career – it’s a surprise that he hasn’t made his dream of playing Iago happen yet. In a time when the industry is being increasingly overrun by massive franchise movies and epic blockbusters, perhaps a major new Shakespeare adaptation wouldn’t go amiss.
Othello has been adapted a handful of times, including 1951’s Orson Welles version (with the filmmaker oddly choosing to play the lead character, who is meant to be black, himself) and 1995’s Laurence Fishburne and Kenneth Branagh vehicle. However, none of these movies have endured in the same way that adaptations of Romeo and Juliet or Hamlet have, so perhaps it’s time that Hanks uses his star power to bring a new version of Othello to the big screen.
