The movie that saw Tom Hanks aim to provide a “degree of integrity” to his role
Every actor will play at least a couple of real-life figures during their career, but Tom Hanks has made a habit out of plucking his characters from the history books and portraying them on-screen.
The two-time Academy Award winner has played over a dozen real people across film and television spanning decades, even if the results aren’t always spectacular. Strangely, he’s only ever been nominated for one Oscar for embodying a genuine article, which came when he tackled Fred Rogers in A Beautiful Day in the Neighbourhood.
Conversely, he won a Razzie when he buried himself under prosthetics to play Tom Parker in Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis, so it’s fair to say he’s always been hit-or-miss. That being said, his performances in Apollo 13, Captain Phillips, and Sully were right out of the top drawer, even if he hasn’t always carried a striking resemblance.
Hanks would be the first to admit that he looks nothing like James Donovan, the protagonist of Steven Spielberg’s Bridge of Spies, but that didn’t matter to him. Instead, he combed through archival footage to adopt the mannerisms before digging deeper into the characters to reflect their morality.
“There was enough footage of him that I could determine a number of things. One, I look absolutely nothing like him. It’s hilarious,” he said to Battle Royale with Cheese, hitting the nail on the head. “That’s no big deal. But there’s the other aspect of how he addressed his mission as an insurance lawyer and how that impacted the movie. My first job was to maintain that degree of integrity.”
Ostensibly a two-hander between Hanks and co-star Mark Rylance, Bridge of Spies focuses on litigator James Donovan being recruited by the CIA to negotiate the release of an American pilot captured by the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War, with the caveat a prisoner exchange is made with Rudolf Abel, a convicted agent of espionage Donovan had previously defended in court.
There are plenty of biographical films where actors have looked identical to their counterparts that were nowhere near as accomplished as Bridge of Spies, with a great performance more than enough to compensate for a lack of physical resemblance, which often carries the risk of descending into imitation and caricature at the expense of drama.
Hanks has proven that in many more films than just one, with getting under the skin and reflecting what kind of a person Donovan was infinitely more important to the movie’s success than looking the part. He was just an ordinary guy placed under extraordinary pressure during a time of immense political tension, and there are few better names in modern cinema history to have epitomised the everyman spirit better than Hanks.
