Tom Hanks once revealed the misconception about his “nice guy” tag
Nobody gets bestowed with the nickname of ‘America’s Dad’ for being a dick, so it stands to reason that Tom Hanks really is every bit as wholesome as his beloved reputation would suggest.
It’s hard not to reach that conclusion, given the way he’s constantly conducted himself over the course of a legendary career, with nobody in the industry ever having a bad word to say about him. In his spare time, he collects antique typewriters, posts images of stray single gloves he encounters on social media, and has made a habit of photobombing people, which aren’t the actions of a right bastard.
Hollywood can often be a place where duplicity and back-stabbing run rampant, but Hanks is evidence that simply being an all-around good guy can lead to decades of virtually unparalleled success. It’s the sort of reputation that can’t be manufactured in an age where people are more than willing to dig around anyone’s closet to see if there are any skeletons lurking around, but was his persona born from apathy?
Part of the Tinseltown machine is hitting press junkets, conducting interviews, treading red carpets, and attending photoshoots, something that many stars actively abhor. At the beginning of his career, Hanks took such a nonchalant approach to the other side of celebrity that it may have inadvertently sprung his ‘nice guy’ status into effect.
When asked by David Sheff what he makes of the tag, Hanks took a shotgun to the belief that it came naturally by indicating that the entire thing could have stemmed from the fact he didn’t give a shit. “I think they confused my not caring about a lot of things with being nice,” he said. “I just show up for these things – photoshoots and stuff – and say, ‘Hi, what do you want me to do?'”
In a world where movie stars are often difficult to the point of bristling, Hanks stood out from the crowd because he asked what was required of him and did it with no fuss. “They get to do whatever they want and I don’t care about what clothes they put me in or anything like that,” he continued. “But it’s not that I’m being a nice guy; I simply don’t care. Life’s too short to worry about all that.”
It’s not quite the career-destroying reveal of ‘Tom Hanks: Secret Arsehole’ or anything like that, but it goes to show how a little niceness goes a long way. Instead of turning his nose up at his obligations, the two-time Academy Award winner carried them out as requested, which by extension helped birth the entirely accurate belief that he really is one of the nicest people in an industry that doesn’t have too many folks like him.
