The story that turned Tom Hanks into a lifelong Stephen King fan: “I read four of his titles in a row”
If there are two names in Hollywood that don’t seem to go together in the same breath, it’s “America’s Dad” Tom Hanks and the “King of Horror” Stephen King. One man tends to represent everything good and pure about the American way of life on-screen, while the other has forged a five-decade-long career from scaring the bejesus out of people. Interestingly, though, their paths have crossed once on film, and Hanks later revealed that he may have signed up for that picture because he is a lifelong King fan.
In 1993, director Frank Darabont offered Hanks a lead role in his debut film. It was a prison drama based on a novella by King, but Hanks was unable to say “yes” to the role. He was busy making a movie about a simple guy from Alabama whose absurdly charming life story revealed a new perspective on 20th-century American life. The movies were, of course, The Shawshank Redemption and Forrest Gump, and both would go on to be beloved classics.
A few years later, Darabont returned to Hanks with another offer: a prison drama based on a novel by King. The actor must have felt a wave of deja vu, but this time, he decided to say “yes” to the director and took on the role of death row prison guard Paul Edgecomb in The Green Mile. While neither Shawshank nor The Green Mile fall nicely into the horror category with the majority of King’s novels, this one at least distinguished itself by featuring supernatural elements that placed it in the realm of magical realism.
To outside observers, it may have looked like Hanks was simply offered two King adaptations within a few years of each other, and the second one worked out for him. In some ways, this is certainly the truth. However, in April 2024, Hanks wrote a short essay for The New York Times as part of an overall article entitled “How Stephen King Got Under Their Skin”, where he revealed that he’s been a fan of King’s work since the late ’70s – so perhaps he’s always harboured an ambition to say King’s words on-screen.
Hanks revealed that he was aware of the Carrie phenomenon in the ’70s, even though he hadn’t actually read the book or seen the classic 1976 Brian De Palma film. He admitted that, at that time, he was “struggling to afford the rent and the diapers while navigating those first years of a creative journey in the big city”, so he had to let Carrie pass him by.
However, when King’s first epic dark fantasy novel The Stand was published by Doubleday in 1978, Hanks was ready. He jumped at the chance to board the King hype train this time, and in a way, it mirrors how he made sure to secure the role in the second King adaptation he was offered, rather than risk missing the boat again.
Hanks revealed, “A copy of The Stand was being gobbled up by our gang, read in a fever pitch on every subway ride and first thing in the morning. Once done, the copy was passed along to the next pair of eyes and promptly devoured.”
By the time the dog-eared copy of the book finally found its way into Hanks’s hands, he was primed to finally read the work of the writer his friends, and the world at large, had been raving about.
He wrote, “I read the opening words — from Springsteen’s ‘Jungleland’ — and disappeared into the Stephen King realm. From there, I read four of his titles in a row — and read him still.”
