Tom Hanks

Actor Tom Hanks began his career on the early 1980s' sitcom Bosom Buddies. His dramatic roles in films such as Philadelphia and Forrest Gump brought him critical and popular acclaim leading to his becoming the youngest ever recipient of the American Film Institute's Life Achievement Award in 2002. In the 2009 adaptation of the Angels and Demons movie, Tom Hanks reprised his role as Robert Langdon. Hanks originated the role of Langdon in the film The Da Vinci Code.

Hanks' The Pacific, co-produced with Steven Spielberg and Gary Goetzman (of Playtone), won the 2010 Emmy award for Outstanding TV Miniseries. The ten part, HBO series profiled the WWII Pacific stage, a vastly different and, until now, lesser showcased military arena. The production took eight years to complete and cost over 200 million dollars; the most expensive yet in the television industry.http://www.deadline.com/2010/08/emmy-night-backstage-tom-hanks/ Hanks has been involved in other productions depicting military struggles including; HBO's Band of Brothers, and the movies Saving Private Ryan and Charlie Wilson's War.http://movies.yahoo.com/movie/contributor/1800010392/filmography

Hanks has referred to the Pacific battleground in WWII as a 'racist' war marked by 'terrorism', and has been criticized for this depiction, but contends that his description is historically valid - the engagement was in reference to two very different cultures clashing in combat, he contends in an interview with a CNS news reporter (quoted below).http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/62716

You can walk into the National World War II museum in New Orleans, in the Pacific wing, and Steven Ambrose himself has made that very point. It’s up in black and white, that after Pearl Harbor, these people that were very, very different from each other, the Americans and the Japanese, who had different heritages, who had different theologies and different ways of government, had a different sense of society went at it tooth and nail.http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/62716

• 1984: Splash as Allen Bauer
• 1986: The Money Pit as Walter Fielding, Jr.
• 1988: Big as Josh Baskin
• 1989: Turner and Hooch as Det. Scott Turner
• 1992: A League Of Their Own as Jimmy Dugan
• 1993: Sleepless in Seattle as Sam Baldwin
• 1993: Philidelphia as Andrew Beckett
• 1994: Forrest Gump as Forrest Gump
• 1995: Apollo 13 as Jim Lovell
• 1998: Saving Private Ryan as Capt. John H. Miller
• 1998: You've Got Mail as Joe Fox
• 1999: The Green Mile as Paul Edgecomb
• 2002: Catch Me If You Can as Carl Hanratty
• 2006: The Da Vinci Code as Robert Langdon
• 2009: Angels & Demons as Robert Langdon
• 2010: Toy Story 3 Voice of 'Woody'

• Note: The majority of the links in this timeline are to IMDb, which has pop-ups.

• July 9, 1956: Born

• 1980 - 1982: Bosom Buddies

• 1984: Splash

• 1984: Bachelor Party

• 1986: The Money Pit

• 1989: Turner and Hooch

• 1990: The Bonfire of the Vanities

• 1992: A League of Their Own

• 1993: Sleepless in Seattle

• 1994: Forrest Gump

• 1995: Apollo 13

• 1996: That Thing You Do!

• 1998: Saving Private Ryan

• 2000: Cast Away

• 2002: Road to Perdition

• 2004: The Terminal

• 2006: The Da Vinci Code

• 2007: Charlie Wilson's War

• 2009: Angels and Demons

• 2010: Toy Story 3