Tom Hanks’ most “badass” role, according to Steven Spielberg: “A special assignment”
Throughout cinema history, there have always been actors and directors who seem cosmically connected, continuously working together to produce acclaimed films. What would Martin Scorsese be without Robert De Niro? How about Sofia Coppola and Kirsten Dunst? Or David Lynch and Harry Dean Stanton? It seems as though when a filmmaker finds an actor they just work perfectly with, they’ll always find a role for them, no matter how small.
It’s not hard to see that Steven Spielberg’s clear favourite is Tom Hanks, having cast him in five movies, beginning with Saving Private Ryan, as well as working together on the television shows Band of Brothers, The Pacific, and Masters of the Air. The filmmaker found a kindred spirit in Hanks, once revealing to The DiamondBack, “When I first made my first movie with Tom as a director, Saving Private Ryan, we were both a little bit nervous, but we worked together almost like we were sharing a brain.”
The pair have since collaborated on movies like Catch Me If You Can, The Terminal, and The Post, although there is one that Spielberg believes is Hanks’ most “badass” role. Released in 2015, Bridge of Spies saw Hanks play a lawyer who must try and aid the release of a pilot who was shot down and captured while flying over the USSR. Also starring Mark Rylance, Alan Alda, Amy Ryan, and Jesse Plemons, the film was widely acclaimed, and it even earned Rylance a ‘Best Supporting Actor’ Oscar.
While Hanks didn’t find himself nominated for an Academy Award, he gave a fearless performance that Spielberg was certainly proud of. He explained to The New York Times, “Tom [Hanks] has played American figureheads in the past, and he’s very representative of our core values of what we believe to be great American leadership. This was a special assignment for Tom, because he’s badass in this story. He was dogged in his pursuit of justice.”
Certainly, Hanks has often played the stereotypical embodiment of the American hero, making him quite the Hollywood sensation. From Philadelphia and Forrest Gump to Saving Private Ryan and Sully, Hanks has hovered towards the likeable kind of character who can triumph in extraordinary situations, and these are the kinds of movies that Spielberg is also a champion of.
Thus, it makes sense that they work so well together, with Spielberg continuously squeezing the best performances out of Hanks. Perhaps this is because the pair have so much in common; in an interview with Time, Hanks revealed: “We developed a language that was all about how we read history for pleasure. We were constantly reading biographies or histories, searching out the documentaries we’d never seen. From that came this dialogue based in, ‘Did you hear about this? Did you read this? Did you see this? Are you reading that now?’”
He added, “It’s no surprise that the first thing we did [Saving Private Ryan] was based on the vision of history we never cease reading about, and it just goes on and on; can’t quite get enough of it. We really had this shorthand. His version of cinema is all his, and instinctive, my version of acting is completely [mine], so we never really talked about the specifics of it.”
