The make-or-break moment of Tom Hanks’ career
One thing you’re certainly not going to get from a career in the arts is stability.
Even for those at the top, for the biggest names in the game, there are moments of uncertainty when one job is over and another has yet to come in. It’s a test of resilience, a test of self-confidence, and one time, Tom Hanks almost failed.
Now, over 80 movies into his career, Hanks is pretty stable and settled with a nice net worth of around $400million and a status as one of the best known men in Hollywood. I’m sure that by now, he doesn’t really have to worry about where his next work is coming from as much as there are likely more offers than he could ever even keep up with, but even still, occasionally, there might be a suddenly and unsettling quietness to the pile on his desk where there is a gap in his schedule and nothing exciting to fill it.
However, that’s a different problem. Now, the mission is trying to find work that Hanks wants to do. But back in the day, when he was just starting out, the mission was to find work, full stop.
It’s the familiar story of any new name in the game. After years of studying his craft and taking any role he could in theatre or uncredited extra work, he finally moved to New York to take it all seriously in 1979 as he was cast in his debut feature, He Knows You’re Alone.
He was somewhat off to the races then, as Bosom Buddies, his own sitcom, premiered soon after and essentially launched his career, making him one to watch. But when that ended in 1982, there was one of those unsettling gaps again where doubt crept in and the bank balance became a worry.
Splash in 1984 was a saving grace and the first time in cinema that he stepped up to leading man. Again, he probably thought this was in, the sky-rocket was set for launch. But instead, there was another gap as the movie actually wrapped long before it was release. So while on his resume it looks like he was booked and busy, there was actually another extended period where Hanks was out of work.
“If I have to wait another couple of years for a job—forget it! I’ll sell the house!” he said. But this was less about money. Instead, it was about feeling stuck and unsettled, stressed and uncertain about what was to come next. For him, the coping mechanism was to keep running and keep moving.
“If the work is not here, go where you’re wanted. It’s a scary proposition but that’s the way my life has always been. If I don’t move every six months I think something is wrong,” he told his biographer, Gavin Edwards, later down the line of his mindset. Always eager to find the next thing, or at least always eager to simply keep pushing forward, even if that meant moving to a new town, Hanks was never one to simply sit back and patiently wait.
However, the trick here was to just wait. If he’d run off, the oppertunities would have lost him – he wouldn’t have booked SNL, he wouldn’t have been cast in a long run of movies, leading up to Big, the career-making moment he’d been chasing.
