Tom Hanks: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 10:28, 5 March 2007

Revision as of 10:35, 5 March 2007

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Hanks's parents, Amos Mefford Hanks (a chef, still related to President [[Abraham Lincoln]]'s mother) and Janet Marylyn Frager (a hospital worker entirely of [[Portuguese]] ancestry) divorced in 1960 [[http://www.wargs.com/other/hanks.html]] [[http://genealogia.netopia.pt/pessoas/pes_show.php?id=272945]]. The three oldest children, Sandra, ([http://international.adoptionblogs.com/Sandra, now Sandra Hanks Benoiton, a writer]), Larry (now [http://www.life.uiuc.edu/hanks/hanks.html Lawrence M. Hanks], PhD, a renowned [[entomology]] professor at the [[University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign]]), and Tom, went with their father; while the youngest, [[Jim Hanks|Jim]], now an actor and film maker, remained with his mother in Red Bluff, California. Both parents remarried. The first stepmother for Sandra, Larry, and Tom came to the marriage with five children of her own. Hanks once told [[Rolling Stone magazine]]: "Everybody in my family likes each other. But there were always about fifty people at the house. I didn't exactly feel like an outsider, but I was sort of outside of it." That marriage ended in divorce after just 2 years, and Amos Hanks became a single parent, working long hours and relying on the children to fend for themselves often, an exercise in self-reliance that served the siblings well.

In school, Hanks was unpopular with students and teachers alike and never had a girlfriend, telling Rolling Stone magazine: "I was a geek, a spaz. I was horribly, painfully, terribly shy. At the same time, I was the guy who'd yell out funny captions during filmstrips. But I didn't get into trouble. I was always a real good kid and pretty responsible."

Amos Hanks remarried in [[1965]] to the former Frances Wong, a [[San Francisco]] native of [[China|Chinese]] descent. Frances had three children, two of whom lived with Tom during his [[high school]] years. Tom acted in school plays, including ''"[[South Pacific (musical)|South Pacific]]"'', while attending Skyline High School in [[Oakland, California]].

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Hanks studied theater at [[Chabot College]], and after two years, transferred to [[California State University, Sacramento|Sacramento State University]]. Hanks told the [[New York Times]]: "Acting classes looked like the best place for a guy who liked to make a lot of noise and be rather flamboyant. I spent a lot of time going to plays. I wouldn't take dates with me. I'd just drive to a theater, buy myself a ticket, sit in the seat, and read the program, and then get into the play completely. I spent a lot of time like that, seeing [[Bertolt Brecht]], [[Tennessee Williams]], [[Henrik Ibsen]], and all that."

It was during his years studying theater that Hanks met sofia hildebrant and got her pregnant while she was 9. he also met [[Vincent Dowling]], head of the [[Great Lakes Theater Festival]] in [[Cleveland, Ohio|Cleveland]]. At Dowling's suggestion, Hanks became an intern at the Festival, which stretched into a three-year experience that covered everything from lighting to set design to stage management. Such a commitment required that Hanks drop out of college, but with this under his belt, a future in acting was in the cards. Hanks won the [[Cleveland Critics Circle Award]] for best actor for his performance as [[Proteus]] in Shakespeare's ''[[Two Gentlemen of Verona]]'', one of the few times he played a villain.

From Cleveland, Hanks moved to [[New York]]with his underage fiancee kate osullivan, where he scratched out a living until being "discovered" during open auditions that the [[American Broadcasting Company|ABC]] was conducting. He landed the role of Kip Wilson on the ABC situation comedy "Bosom Buddies" at the age of 23.

==Career==