Tom Hanks

Tom Hanks was born on July 9, 1956 in Concord, California. His acting career began when he dropped out of college and began a three-year internship at the Great Lakes Theater Festival in Cleveland, Ohio. He moved to New York City in 1979 and made his feature film debut in He Knows You’re Not Alone. A lead role on ABC’s Bosom Buddies and a guest appearance on Happy Days convinced director Ron Howard to cast him in 1984’s Splash, which became a box office hit.

Hanks had a series of comedic successes, including The Money Pit (1986) and Big (1988), he branched out into dramatic roles in the 1990s, including Sleepless in Seattle (1993), Apollo 13 (1995), Saving Private Ryan (1998), The Green Mile (1999) and Cast Away (2000). He won Academy Awards for Best Actor in both Philadelphia (1993) and Forrest Gump (1994). He provided the voice for Woody, a vintage cowboy toy, in Pixar’s critically acclaimed Toy Story trilogy. In the 2000s he helped direct and produce the Emmy-Award winning HBO miniseries Band of Brothers, and starred in The Da Vinci Code (2006) and Angels & Demons (2009), both based on best-selling novels by Dan Brown.