Hanks's parents, Amos Mefford Hanks (a chef, related to President Abraham Lincoln's mother) and Janet Marylyn Frager (a hospital worker) divorced in 1960. The three oldest children, Sandra, (now Sandra Hanks Benoiton, a writer), Rufus (now 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, now an actor and film maker, remained with his mother in Red Bluff, California. Both parents remarried. The first stepmother for Sandra, Larry (Rufus), 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, 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 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", while attending Skyline High School in Oakland, California.

Hanks studied theater at Chabot College, and after two years, transferred to 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 Vincent Dowling, head of the Great Lakes Theater Festival in 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 The Two Gentlemen of Verona, one of the few times he played a villain.

From Cleveland, Hanks moved to New York, where he scratched out a living until being "discovered" during open auditions that the ABC was conducting. He landed the role of Kip Wilson on the ABC situation comedy "Bosom Buddies" at the age of 23.


In 1979, Hanks moved to New York City, where he made his film debut in the low-budget slasher film, He Knows You're Alone, and got a part in a television movie entitled Mazes and Monsters. He continued to audition and finally landed a role on an ABC television pilot called Bosom Buddies. "It was flukesville", Hanks told Newsweek about the show. Hanks flew to Los Angeles, California where he was teamed with Peter Scolari as a pair of young advertising men forced to dress as women so they could live in an inexpensive all-female hotel. He had previously partnered with Scolari in the 1970s game show, Make Me Laugh. Bosom Buddies ran for two seasons, and, although the ratings were never strong, television critics gave the program high marks. "The first day I saw him on the set", the show's co-producer, Ian Praiser told Rolling Stone, "I thought, 'Too bad he won't be in television for long.' I knew he'd be a movie star in two years." But if Praiser knew it, he was not able to convince Hanks. "The television show had come out of nowhere", Hanks’ best friend Tom Lizzio told Rolling Stone. "Then out of nowhere it got cancelled. He figured he'd be back to pulling ropes and hanging lights in a theater."

It was Bosom Buddies and a guest appearance on a 1982 episode of Happy Days ("A Case of Revenge") where he played a disgruntled former class mate of The Fonz that drew director Ron Howard to contact Hanks. Howard was working on Splash (1984), a romantic comedy fantasy about a mermaid who falls in love with a human. At first, Howard considered Hanks for the role of the main character's wisecracking brother, a role which eventually went to John Candy. Instead, Hanks got the lead role and a career boost from Splash, which went on to become a box-office hit, grossing more than $69 million.


Progression into dramatic roles


Hanks again climbed back to the top with his portrayal of an unsuccessful baseball manager in A League of Their Own (1992). Tom admits that his acting in earlier roles was not great and that he has improved. In an interview with Vanity Fair, Hanks called the work that he's done since his "modern era of moviemaking ... because enough self-discovery has gone on.... My work has become less 'pretentiously fake."

This "modern era" welcomed in a spectacular 1993 for Hanks, first with Sleepless in Seattle and then with Philadelphia. The former was a blockbuster success about a widower who finds true love (in the character of Meg Ryan) over the airwaves. Richard Schickel of Time called his performance "charming", and most agreed that his portrayal ensured him a place among the premiere romantic-comedy stars of his generation, making him bankable. In Philadelphia Hanks played a gay lawyer with AIDS who sues his firm for discrimination (Hanks lost thirty-five pounds and thinned his hair in order to appear sickly for the role.) In a review for People, Leah Rozen stated "Above all, credit for "Philadelphia's" success belongs to Hanks, who makes sure that he plays a character, not a saint. He is flat-out terrific, giving a deeply felt, carefully nuanced performance that deserves an Oscar."

Hanks won the 1994 Academy Award for Best Actor for his role in Philadelphia. During his acceptance speech he revealed that his high school drama teacher was gay. The revelation inspired the 1997 film In & Out, starring Kevin Kline as an English Literature teacher who was outed by a former student in a similar way.