The actor Steven Spielberg called the perfect collaborator: “This incredibly creative vessel”
Steven Spielberg has worked with some of the greats, including Mark Rylance, Daniel Day-Lewis, Michelle Williams, Christian Bale as a youngster, and Liam Neeson, to name just a few. Thanks to pioneering the modern blockbuster and churning out hit film after hit film, he can pretty much cast any actor he wants, so when he singles out one performer in particular, you know it’s the gold standard.
The director has a knack for blending big-budget action with sentimentality. Extraterrestrials, sharks, and dinosaurs are all just nail-biting window-dressing for the stories of love, family, and goodness at the heart of his movies, so it’s no surprise that Tom Hanks has appeared in no fewer than five of his films – Saving Private Ryan in 1998, Catch Me If You Can in 2002, The Terminal in 2004, Bridge of Spies in 2015, and The Post in 2017. They’ve also worked together on several television shows, including Band of Brothers.
Hanks exudes warmth and decency, making him the perfect fit for Spielberg’s films. But according to the director, the star doesn’t just bring his reassuring persona to the job, he brings a level of enthusiasm that galvanises the whole production.
In an interview around the time Bridge of Spies was released, Spielberg showered praise on Hanks, saying, “Tom Hanks is the perfect collaborator. He will try anything and he’s got a thousand ideas and is open to a thousand ideas from other people. He’s this incredibly creative vessel that just wants to figure things out in a more original way.”
Although the actor has a reputation for playing decent, upstanding characters, it’s no surprise that Spielberg singles out his fearlessness as a performer. He might not have the physical range of Day-Lewis or Bale, but he has shown a willingness (and even an eagerness) to play in a wide range of genres over the years. In fact, he probably doesn’t get enough credit for his adventurousness as an actor because his involvement in a project automatically makes the film seem less experimental than it might be on the page.
Everything from the history-spanning Wachowski epic Cloud Atlas to his early television role in Bosom Buddies that saw him dressing in drag required some level of professional risk. And even movies like Forrest Gump were far from a sure thing. Although many film fans adore Zemeckis’s 1994 movie all these years later, the novel it was based on was not a bestseller, and the story of a low-IQ southerner who magically finds himself in the midst of historically pivotal events wasn’t exactly a classic formula.
One of Hanks’s greatest abilities is to make unusual roles instantly loveable and palatable to a broad audience. But that often obscures the boldness of his choices. As Spielberg acknowledges, however, he brings as much intensity and investment to his work as the Method actors of the world, but, as you’d expect, his version of intensity looks more like creative generosity and enthusiasm than staying in character for months and forcing everyone on the production to treat him like Forrest or Mr Rodgers or (God forbid) Colonel Tom Parker.
