Tom Hanks On-screen and Off-screen Quiz

Answer: 1956

Tom Hanks, whose full name is Thomas Jeffrey Hanks, was born on July the 9th, 1956, in Concord, California. He was the third of four children born to Amos and Janet Marylyn Hanks, who worked as a cook and as a hospital worker respectively. In 1961 his parents divorced, after which Tom and his two older siblings lived with their father and had a fairly nomadic life so that Tom lived in ten different houses during his first ten years.

Tom had a number of step-siblings as his father twice married other women who already had children from a previous relationship, although both of these marriages ended in divorce too. For two years in the early 1960s Amos was married to Winifred, who already had five children, and in 1965 he married Frances Wong, two of whose three children had stayed with her. Through his father's side of the family Tom is distantly related to Abraham Lincoln, the 16th US President, and to television presenter Fred Rogers, who Tom played in the 2019 movie, 'A Beautiful Day in the Neighbourhood'.

Answer: Chabot College

While he was attending Skyline High School in Oakland, California, Tom Hanks began acting in plays put on by the school. When he left the school in 1974 he applied to a few further education establishments and was accepted by Chabot College in Hayward, California. While there he studied a number of courses, including film as art, health, zoology, English and public speaking. After two years at this college he transferred to California State University in Sacramento, California, intending to major in dramatic arts.

In an interview published by the New York Times on January 14th, 2015, Tom spoke positively about Chabot College and the chances it gave to a lot of people. Such community colleges in the US receive some funding and usually provide at least subsidised tuition for students in between high school and university. Tom was supportive of Barack Obama's 2015 suggestion of a 'College Promise' plan under which funding would be augmented by the federal government in order to finance free tuition in these colleges for many Americans.

Answer: The Cherry Orchard

While studying dramatic arts at the California State University in Sacramento, Tom Hanks auditioned for a role in a Great Lakes Shakespeare Festival's production of Chekhov's 'The Cherry Orchard'. He was successful and the company's artistic director, Vincent Dowling, also offered him a place in the theatre company, which was based in Cleveland and was later renamed the Great Lakes Theater.

He accepted the job offer and stayed with the repertory theatre for three years, during which he not only acted in plays but became involved in set design and lighting and in stage management. While there, Tom won the Cleveland Critics Circle Award for Best Actor of 1978 for his role as Proteus in Shakespeare's play 'The Two Gentlemen of Verona'. He had left university early and was named as one of the 'Top 10 College Dropouts' by 'Time' magazine in 2010.

'The Cherry Orchard' was written by Anton Chekhov, 'Waiting for Godot' by Samuel Beckett, 'The Rivals' by Richard Brinsley Sheridan and 'Death of a Salesman' by Arthur Miller.

Answer: Samantha Lewes

Samantha Lewes was born in San Diego in 1952 and her birth name was Susan Jane Dillingham. She was an actress who married Tom Hanks in 1978 and the couple had two children, Colin (born in 1977), and Elizabeth (born in 1982). Colin became a movie and television actor and has done some directing while Elizabeth eventually chose a career as a writer. The couple divorced in 1987 and in 2002 Samantha died from bone cancer when she was 49 years old.

Through his work Tom had got to know actress Rita Wilson, who was born in 1956 and whose birth name was Margarita Ibrahimoff. After he and Samantha divorced he married Rita in 1988 and the couple had two sons, Chester Marlon "Chet" (born in 1990) and Truman Theodore (born in 1995). Like Tom's first son Colin, they also became actors with Chet having had a number of roles in movies and in television shows and Truman playing the young Otto in the 2022 movie 'A Man Called Otto'.

Meg Ryan and Julia Roberts are American actresses.

Answer: The Love Boat

Several series of the television show 'The Love Boat' were made by Aaron Spelling Productions and were originally shown from 1977 to 1986. The programme was set on a cruise ship, and members of the ship's crew were played by a regular cast while guest actors played the ship's passengers. Tom Hanks was one of the latter, appearing in an episode entitled "Friends and Lovers/Sergeant Bull/Miss Mother" in 1980.

All three of the alternative answers were television shows in which Tom appeared in 1982, having a lead role in 'Mazes and Monsters', a movie made for television, and guest roles in episodes of the 'Happy Days' and 'Taxi' television shows. In addition, soon after his appearance in 'The Love Boat', he and Peter Scolari obtained the two lead roles in the two series of 'Bosom Buddies' which were first shown on ABC between 1980 and 1982.

Answer: One

In the 1985 movie 'The Man with One Red Shoe' Tom Hanks played a concert violinist on whom another member of the same orchestra played a trick by taking two of his shoes and leaving him with only one red shoe and one black shoe to wear. Tom's character unknowingly became involved in a CIA plot but things turned out well for him in the end. It was his fourth role, and his third leading role, in a movie made for the cinema.

After 'The Man with One Red Shoe' Tom continued to have leading roles in many movies of different kinds. Among those he made during the 1980s are 'The Money Pit' (1986), 'Big' (1988) and 'Turner & Hooch' (1989). The 1990's movies he starred in include 'Philadelphia' (1993) and 'Forrest Gump' (1994), for his part in each of which he won an Academy Award for Best Actor. During the 1990s Tom also began to have other roles in movie-making, beginning with 'That Thing You Do' (1996) which he wrote, directed and acted in.

Answer: Toy Story

For the 1995 movie 'Toy Story' Tom Hanks provided the voice of one of the main characters, Sheriff Woody Pride, who had been his owner's favourite toy until he was given a spaceman toy, Buzz Lightyear. The movie showed the two initially hostile toys gradually becoming friends. This movie had three sequels, 'Toy Story 2' (1999), 'Toy Story 3' (2010) and 'Toy Story 4' (2019), and Tom was the voice of Woody in each one.

'Toy Story' was also followed by a number of short, 'spin-off' movies for which Tom Hanks again provided Woody's voice, for example in 'Small Fry' (2011). He also voiced Woody in animated made-for-television movies, including 'Toy Story of Terror!' (2013) and 'Toy Story That Time Forgot' (2014). In addition Tom voiced the animated character Woody Car in the movie 'Cars' (2006) and provided the voice of several characters in the animated movie 'The Polar Express' (2004), including the train's conductor, the boy hero and his father, a hobo, Scrooge and Santa Claus.

Answer: Angels & Demons

The author Dan Brown has written several novels whose main character is Robert Langdon, a professor of religious symbology with Harvard University, who uses his knowledge to help defeat terrorists. Three books have been adapted into movies for the cinema and Tom Hanks has played Robert Langdon in each one. 'The Da Vinci Code' (2006) was the first of these movies while 'Angels & Demons' (2009) was the second and 'Inferno' (2016) the third.

During the first decade of the twenty-first century Tom Hanks starred in a number of movies, including 'Catch Me If You Can' (2002), which co-starred Leonardo DiCaprio, and 'Charlie Wilson's War' (2007), the latter of which Tom also co-produced with Gary Goetzman. Tom produced or co-produced several other movies in this period including 'My Big Fat Greek Wedding' (2002) and 'Connie and Carla' (2004).

Tom became involved in creating television shows as well as movies from the 1990s onwards and one television show he helped to write, direct and produce was the HBO miniseries 'Band of Brothers' (2001), which won an Emmy Award. He has won a number of other awards too, for instance becoming the youngest-ever recipient of the American Film Institute's Life Achievement Award in June 2002.

Answer: California Typewriter

California Typewriter was the name of one of the last typewriter repair shops in the US which shut down in 2020 but was still in business when the movie 'California Typewriter' was made in 2016. The movie included a documentary about the shop and more general commentaries by typewriter users on people's relationships with typewriters and with modern technology. It premiered at the 2016 Telluride Film Festival and received a very positive critical reception. The movie was nominated for several awards and director, cinematographer and editor Doug Nichol won three of these awards at the 2017 Newport Beach Film Festival.

As well as Tom Hanks, whose contribution to 'California Typewriter' received acclaim, a number of other people working in the arts and in academia contributed commentaries and among the better known are singer-songwriter John Mayer, playwright-actor Sam Shepard and biographer David McCullough.

A number of the contributors to the movie have collected typewriters and Tom Hanks is among these, collecting typewriters of different kinds and ages and using them on a daily basis since 1978. He wrote a book of short stories, 'Uncommon Type', the idea for which was inspired by his collection, and when this was published in 2017 it attracted positive reviews.

Answer: Greyhound

The 2020 movie 'Greyhound' was set in 1942 and based on the 1955 book 'The Good Shepherd' by C. S. Forester. In it Tom Hanks played the overall commander of a four-ship destroyer escort protecting a supply and troop convoy as it crossed the Atlantic. 'Greyhound' was the callsign of his ship. The movie was due to open in cinemas in 2020 but these closed due to COVID-19 and it was sold by its production company, Sony Pictures, to the digital streaming service APPLE+, who released it online. In fact 'Greyhound' was watched more often during its first weekend of release than were any of the other movies streamed by Apple, at least up to that point.

Tom also appeared in the three movies given as alternative answers, co-starring with Darryl Hannah in 'Splash' (1984) and playing the main character in both 'Cast Away' (2000) and 'Captain Phillips' (2013). The latter was based on a real-life person and incident, as was 'Sully' (2016), another movie in which Tom had the lead role. Tom continued to co-star and star in movies as the twenty-first century proceeded, including 'Elvis' (2022) and 'A Man Called Otto' (2022).

As well as the movie- and television-related awards he has received, Tom was awarded the US Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2016 and the Ordre national de la Légion d'honneur by France in 2016, among other honours.