Thomas Jeffrey Hanks (born July 9, 1956) is an American actor and filmmaker. Known for both his comedic and dramatic roles, he is one of the most popular and recognizable film stars worldwide, and is regarded as an American cultural icon.^[2] Hanks’ films have grossed more than $4.9 billion in North America and more than $9.96 billion worldwide,^[3] making him the fourth-highest-grossing actor in North America.^[4] He has received numerous honors including the AFI Life Achievement Award in 2002, the Kennedy Center Honor in 2014, the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the French Legion of Honor both in 2016,^[5][6] as well as the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award in 2020.^[7]

Hanks made his breakthrough with leading roles in a series of comedy films which received positive media attention, such as Splash (1984), The Money Pit (1986), Big (1988), and A League of Their Own (1992). He won two consecutive Academy Awards for Best Actor for starring as a gay lawyer suffering from AIDS in Philadelphia (1993) and the title character in Forrest Gump (1994).^[8] Hanks collaborated with film director Steven Spielberg on five films: Saving Private Ryan (1998), Catch Me If You Can (2002), The Terminal (2004), Bridge of Spies (2015), and The Post (2017), as well as the HBO miniseries Band of Brothers (2001) and The Pacific (2010), which launched him as a director, producer, and screenwriter. He has also frequently collaborated with film directors Ron Howard, Nora Ephron, and Robert Zemeckis.

Hanks’ other films include the romantic comedies Sleepless in Seattle (1993) and You’ve Got Mail (1998); the dramas Apollo 13 (1995), The Green Mile (1999), Cast Away (2000), Road to Perdition (2002) and Cloud Atlas (2012); and the biographical dramas Charlie Wilson’s War (2007), Captain Phillips (2013), Saving Mr. Banks (2013), Sully (2016), A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (2019), News of the World (2020) and Elvis (2022). He has also appeared as the title character in the Robert Langdon film series, and voiced Sheriff Woody in the Toy Story film series (1995–2019). Hanks directed the comedy That Thing You Do! (1996), followed by the romantic comedy Larry Crowne (2011), both of which he acted in.

In 1998, Hanks launched his production company Playtone which has an exclusive television development deal with HBO. For his work on television, Hanks has also won seven Primetime Emmy Awards for his work as a producer of various limited series and television movies, including From the Earth to the Moon (1998), Band of Brothers (2001), John Adams (2008), The Pacific (2009), Game Change (2012), and Olive Kitteridge (2015). He made his Broadway debut in Nora Ephron’s Lucky Guy (2013) earning a Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play nomination.^[9]