Tom Hanks’ biggest frustration with being a world-renowned icon: “There’s nothing you can do about it”
Every actor dreams of making it to the top of the profession, which, by extension, means they know exactly what’s waiting for them at the top. Tom Hanks may have been an A-list superstar since the late 1980s, but one element of celebrity continues to frustrate more than any other.
It’s part of the deal for a world-famous actor that privacy becomes an afterthought for anyone who isn’t part of their inner circle. Even when they’re not working, paparazzi and autograph hunters hound and occasionally harass them wherever they go, leaving them with little option but to grin and bear it.
Even when they’re on set and doing the job they signed up to do, it comes with the knowledge that when it’s time for the movie in question to release, the talent will be obligated to travel the country – if not the world – and attend a number of premieres and dole out countless interviews to members of the press.
None of that bothers Hanks too much because he knew what he was getting himself into when Big first catapulted him towards household name status before winning back-to-back Academy Awards for Philadelphia and Forrest Gump made him one of Hollywood’s most bankable marquee names.
However, he draws the line at his career being used against him and wielded as a measuring stick against his newest work, which is fair enough. “There’s nothing you can do about it at all,” Hanks mused to The New Yorker of how to navigate and cope with the trappings of fame, even if he’s become increasingly aware that his legacy has become a positive or negative depending on what he’s most recently been doing.
“No matter who you are, you carry your countenance with you into every single job you do,” he elaborated. “So much so that now the first two paragraphs of any review of any of my movies are actually about all the other movies I’ve ever made.” To illustrate his point, Hanks pointed towards A Man Called Otto, which cast him slightly against type as a bitter and miserable curmudgeonly widower.
According to Hanks, “Nine reviews out of ten said, ‘Giving up his Forrest Gump nice-guy persona’, or ‘Not unlike Jim Lovel in Apollo 13, Tom Hanks’ Otto blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.'” It comes with the territory when one person’s public persona is so enmeshed with a certain type of character or set of personality traits, but it’s clear that it continues to get under the star’s skin.
It’s entirely possible to look at any Hanks performance in isolation, but because the pitfalls of celebrity have anointed him as ‘America’s Dad’ and one of the nicest guys in Tinseltown, it’s become a brush that tars him every time he takes to the silver screen whether he likes it or not.
