Tom Hanks’ fascination with the Second World War goes back to his youth. Growing up in 1960s America, he remembers that most adults he knew had a link with the war. ‘My dad, my teacher, my dad’s friends, and my friends’ parents’ all talked about the war, he recalls. Whether they had been at the front, or in a wartime factory, they had all participated in one way or another, and their perspective was ‘reminiscent of them talking about a great plague or a great flood’. As a kid who was always searching out ‘some degree of non-fiction entertainment’, he particularly remembers admiring the British television series The World at War and movies like Kelly’s Heroes and The Great Escape.
Hanks began his acting career in the 1980s, and soon became known for his comedy roles in movies like Big (1988), for which he was nominated for an Academy Award. He then went on to more serious dramatic roles, including playing a gay lawyer with AIDS in Philadelphia (1993), for which he won the Oscar for Best Actor. Returning to comedy, one of his defining roles was as the title character in Forrest Gump (1994), for which he won a consecutive Best Actor Oscar. By the mid-1990s, he was one of the most successful and best-known actors in Hollywood, appearing in a wide variety of genres, from thrillers to voicing animation films (Toy Story), frequently picking up awards.
In 1998, he played a leading role in Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan as Captain John Miller, who led the patrol to find Private James Ryan (Matt Damon) and take him out of the line after his three brothers had been killed in action. The film is not only one of the best war movies ever made but it has been credited as causing a revival of interest in World War II, inspiring a host of television shows and movies about the war. As close collaborators, Hanks and Spielberg co-produced the HBO television series Band of Brothers (2001), which proved immensely successful with audiences around the world. Filmed mostly in England, this series told the story of ‘Easy’ Company of the 506th Regiment of the US 101st Airborne Division as it fought its way across Europe from Normandy to southern Germany. Combining his Second World War interests with further acting roles, he went on to executive produce the less-successful Far East version of Band of Brothers called The Pacific in 2010.
