Tom Hanks: Playboy Interview

Hollywood is stuffed like a tin of Beluga caviar with people "famous for being well known," to use a phrase coined by historian Daniel Boorstin. Off the screen, there are actors known for the photographers they punch and for the causes they support; there are actors known for their dollars and actors known for their scents; there are those who are famous for being arrested at nuclear-test sites and for not being able to get themselves arrested; there are those known for their hair and those known for their stubble.

And then there is Tom Hanks.

Let's put it delicately: If Tom Hanks had to depend on his off-camera image to become celebrated, he wouldn't be. Hanks is the first to admit that he is neither particularly good-looking nor a scintillating conversationalist. He doesn't fight, do drugs, carouse, gossip or speak out on politics.

Yet Hanks's face is everywhere these days, from the big screen to the season premiere of Saturday Night Live to the cover of Newsweek. They're even talking about an Oscar for the guy. What gives?

This: Tom Hanks does one thing incredibly well—he can act like a dream. The respect in which he is held by both critics and his fellow actors has been remarkable, given his relatively brief career. He has been likened to such greats as Cary Grant and Jimmy Stewart. He has held his own—and more—with such pros as Sally Field and Jackie Gleason. Normally reserved reviewers have described him in words they reserve for the De Niros, Pacinos and Nicholsons. Most of all, what they say is that Hanks makes acting look easy.

Nineteen eighty-eight was the year of Tom Hanks. Big was released during the invasion of the body switchers—that spate of boy/adult movies with nearly identical plots—and his competition included the likes of Dudley Moore and Judge Reinhold. But Hanks, in "Big," would deliver a touching honesty not visible in the other movies. The story of a 13-year-old boy who wishes that he were (and then really becomes) "big," the film became an immediate smash. "Big," like all hit comedies, had its classic moments: Hanks at his first grown-up party, gagging on the caviar; Hanks and Robert Loggia tapping out "Chopsticks" on an oversized keyboard; Hanks cooling off Elizabeth Perkins by telling her that if she really wants to "sleep over" at his place, he wants to be on top (he means the top bunk); Hanks peering into his shorts to see if he's big there, too; Hanks shooting silly string from his mouth and, of course, politely nibbling row after row of his tiny appetizer corn.

Producer James Brooks, who had directed Broadcast News and Terms of Endearment, had originally wanted Harrison Ford or Robert De Niro for the part. Hanks was a fortuitous third choice. The film lived up to its name, becoming one of the biggest movies of 1988, grossing more than $110,000,000 and instantly catapulting Hanks, who had earned rave after rave, to the ranks of stardom.

There was also Punchline. Made before but released after Big, the film had Hanks tackling the risky role of a brilliant but tortured stand-up comedian. It was the type of assignment in which being a good actor—like his co-star Sally Field—simply wasn't enough; he'd also have to learn how to sidle up to a microphone and, without dialog or partner, be genuinely funny. When "Punchline" was released, critics generally agreed that Hanks's performance was better than the film itself. Talk of an Oscar began then.

All of which was wildly unlikely, given Hanks's less-than-lucky past. Born in 1956, he had a difficult childhood, caused in part by the divorce of his parents when he was five. He and his brother and sister lived with their father; his younger brother went to live with their mother. Hanks's father worked in the restaurant business but moved the family often from town to town, mostly in Northern California. When his father married for the second time, he got a stepmother, along with five more kids. Divorce came again two years later and that family was split up. Then a third wife moved in. Meanwhile, life with Tom's natural mother was even less stable: She remarried three times and he rarely saw her during the years he was growing up. The Brady Bunch it wasn't.

Nor was school Hanks's strong suit. He had few compelling interests until, at a community college in Sacramento, he enrolled in a drama course. His first job was that of a stagehand, and he never looked back.

Hanks met actress Samantha Lewes in Sacramento, where they had been working in a college theater group. Moving to New York City, where they married, the two struggling actors combed the city for work, only to move back to California—this time to L.A.—where Hanks had been offered his first important role, in Bosom Buddies, a sitcom in which he and co-star Peter Scolari appeared mostly in drag. Despite an enthusiastic cult following, the show was canceled after two years, just in time for Hanks's first major film role—as the guy who falls for a mermaid in Ron Howard's Splash. The film became one of the biggest hits of 1984.

Since that film's success, Hanks has been on a roll, making 12 movies in six years. A kind of droll comic genius is the common denominator in almost all these films, though the roles have varied: one of the guys after suds 'n' girls in Bachelor Party; the beleaguered new owner of a ramshackle mansion in The Money Pit (with Shelley Long); the whiz-kid ad man with a hard-boiled dad in Nothing in Common (with Jackie Gleason); Dan Aykroyd's carefree partner in crime prevention (but careful enough to practice safe sex) in Dragnet.

Tom and Samantha were divorced in 1987, with two children, now six and ten. He was remarried last year to Rita Wilson, an actress whom he met on the set of his forgettable Peace Corps comedy, Volunteers. His next film, due for a spring release, is The 'burbs, a comedy with Bruce Dern and Carrie Fisher.

When Playboy decided to track down Tom Hanks, a surprising number of women offered assistance to interviewer and Contributing Editor David Sheff—"Maybe I can carry your tape recorder, huh?" Ever the professional, Sheff braved the assignment solo. Here's his report:

"Hanks was wearing sweats and sneakers and had forgotten to shave the day I met him in his office at Disney Studios—just past the Mickey Mouse mailboxes and Chip and Dale ashtrays. The fact that his office is in the studio's animation building seems somehow appropriate. Inside, there are only a few personal items to distinguish it as Hanks's: For one, hanging on the wall above his Macintosh SE is a framed 'Dear Tom' letter, congratulating him on his marriage and raving about his performance in Top Gun, which, of course, he wasn't in.

"Almost immediately, I learned that Hanks is a soft-spoken, modest man who is stubborn about only one thing, as far as I could tell: letting anyone from the press into his house. The location, in Los Angeles, seems to be one of his most fiercely guarded secrets.

"When I drove up to it during one of the later sessions, he came out to meet me, saying, 'This is the closest anyone has ever been.' I was only at the garage.

"Although I promised Hanks that I wouldn't reveal the location of his house, let me note that it isn't particularly lavish, and neither are the cars in front of it—among them, a VW convertible and a Honda Accord.

"That particular morning, Hanks was dressed in a rubber wet suit. We were going surfing, one of his newer passions.

"He took some surfing gear from the garage and jammed it into the trunk of his car, next to a set of golf clubs. We secured the surfboard onto the roof of the car and, as we strapped ourselves in for the ride, he offered me coffee from a large Thermos. He had made the coffee himself—there was just the right amount of cream already in it—and balanced his own cup as we drove down Sunset Boulevard toward the Pacific Coast Highway.

"At Malibu beach, he stopped the car and handed me a towel. 'I thought you might want a towel so you'd be more comfortable on the beach,' he said. I remember thinking, How considerate. And he makes such great coffee. But after the many hours spent with him over the course of the interview, I began to wonder about this comic actor, When is the fun supposed to start? How about a joke? "Not working is what drives actors stark-raving mad and why they develop ulcers and drug problems."

"Finally, a wave came. It was not a large wave, but it was a wave and Hanks paddled frantically to try to catch it. It came to shore without him. Soon, another tiny wave broke and he missed that one, too. But still he waited, his hands on his hips, out there on his board.

"Then, another wave came, and he started paddling again. The wave began breaking and it looked as if he were going to catch this one. He was up, he was down. For someone who had been surfing for only a few months, he was certainly determined; and he rode the wave until it petered out about four seconds later.

"He shrugged and headed out again. There he was, paddling about and missing waves—his legs flailing behind him, his hair sticking up on top of his head—and it was becoming funny. I found myself laughing out loud.

"Finally, it dawned on me. If a camera had been on him, this would have been a quintessential Hanks scene: He was doing something with the utmost sincerity and was by turn endearing, charming, silly and goofy just being himself."