Tom Hanks’ one and only favourite actor of all time: “I’d pay to watch him walk across the street”
A lot of people would call Tom Hanks their favourite actor, and with good reason, but who would Tom Hanks call his favourite actor? He’s worked with some of the greats, but it was an easy decision.
The one thing that constantly bugged the shit out of Hanks when he was clambering up the Hollywood ladder were those pesky James Stewart comparisons, but he still saw fit to call American cinema’s ultimate everyman “the best of all time.” Did that make ol’ Jimmy his number one? No, it did not.
It didn’t take long for Hanks to break out of Stewart’s aw-shucks shadow and become his own man, and it’s long since reached a point where any actor who emerges on the scene with an innate likability, easy-going charm, and effortless screen presence has brought things full circle and been dubbed the new Tom Hanks.
Of course, there’s no such thing as the new Tom Hanks, especially when the old one is still around. He may not be as ubiquitous as he once was, and onscreen missteps are becoming more frequent than they used to be, but one indefatigable fact remains true: people have, do, and no doubt always will fucking love the guy.
From his inauspicious beginnings in a terrible, terrible slasher film to back-to-back Academy Award wins to ‘Best Actor’ into his current position as one of cinema’s most beloved and endlessly endearing veterans, Hanks has rubbed shoulders with the best of the best of several generations, and he’s in that company himself, making the sort of impression on young actors that Paul Newman had on him.
And yet, despite sparring onscreen with everyone from Newman and Denzel Washington to Meryl Streep and Morgan Freeman, the two-time Oscar winner has never entered the orbit of his all-time favourite actor. You’d think he’d move heaven and earth to do so, especially when he said he’d watch them do anything.
When quizzed on that very topic by Bruce Jenkins, Hanks had a question of his own: “That I’ve worked with? Or in life as we know it?” Not that it mattered, because without missing a beat, the Green Mile and Forrest Gump headliner made it perfectly clear that there was only one name on that list.
“My favourite actor of all time is Robert Duvall,” he said. “He has been ever since I saw a movie called The Rain People, that was one of Coppola’s early works. Then a week or so later, I was watching To Kill a Mockingbird, and realised he was the guy playing Boo Radley all those years.”
In the space of a week, Duvall had gone from ‘that guy in that movie I liked’ to his all-time favourite actor. Or, as Hanks put it, “From that moment on, I was just on his creative bus.” Even now, he’ll be the first in line to see whatever the veteran appears in, declaring that, “I’d still pay money just to watch him walk across the street.”
