Tom Hanks is one of the most successful and beloved actors in cinema history. He is a six-time Academy Award nominee and two-time winner. Hanks has appeared in beloved crowd favorites like Forrest Gump and critically acclaimed masterpieces like Philadelphia. However, as with all actors, he had to start somewhere.
Hanks was not always the critical darling, as he got his most significant break on the television show Bosom Buddies, where he had to pretend to be a woman so he could live in an all-woman high rise building.
HE KNOWS YOU'RE ALONE (1980)
It might come as a surprise that the first movie that Tom Hanks starred in was a horror movie. This movie was called He Knows You're Alone in 1980. The film was one of the first ones that were influenced by the success of John Carpenter's Halloween. He plays a man named Elliot in a small role where he meets a girl who is stalked by a serial killer who murders brides to be.
SPLASH (1984)
Four years after Tom Hanks appeared in his first movie, he made his name on the small screen in Bosom Buddies and Family Ties. That helped Hanks pick up some attention from Ron Howard and get cast in his first leading movie role, Splash. The film had Howard as a man who met and fell in love with a mermaid (Daryl Hannah). The film picked up an Oscar nomination for screenplay.
BACHELOR PARTY (1984)
After the beloved Splash, Tom Hanks appeared in a juvenile sex comedy. In Bachelor Party, he starred as a party animal who also works as a bus driver for a Catholic school. He soon decides to get married (to Tawny Kitaen), so his friends throw him a bachelor party. Meanwhile, his fiance's ex-boyfriend wants to sabotage the marriage plans and uses the bachelor party as the perfect opportunity.
THE MAN WITH ONE RED SHOE (1985)
In 1985, Tom Hanks starred in The Man with One Red Shoe, a remake of a 1972 French film by Yves Robert. In the movie, a CIA agent is arrested on drug smuggling charges, and the man responsible is CIA deputy director Burton Cooper (Dabney Coleman), who is trying to weasel his way to the top.
When the CIA Director devices a plan to trap Cooper and reveal his plans, Tom Hanks' concert violinist Richard Drew is accidentally mistaken as a mole and ends up with Cooper and his men after him, all while oblivious to everything going on around him.
VOLUNTEERS (1985)
A second movie hit in 1985 with Volunteers, a comedy starring Tom Hanks and John Candy. Hanks is Lawrence, a spoiled-rich Yale graduate who goes on the run with debtors come after him, and his dad refused to bail him out with a loan. He jumps on a Peace Corps plane to Thailand and meets another college graduate (Candy) and a down-to-earth girl in beth (Rita Wilson). Wilson and Hanks married in real life three years later.
THE MONEY PIT (1986)
Tom Hanks continued to prove that he was his generation's version of Cary Grant when he appeared in a remake of an old Grant movie in 1986. The film —renamed The Money Pit — had Hanks star as an attorney named Walter, who, along with his girlfriend, a musician named Anna (Shelley Long), buy a house on the cheap. However, the mansion starts to fall apart instantly and becomes a real money pit for the couple.
NOTHING IN COMMON (1986)
Also, in 1986, Tom Hanks starred with a comic legend for a comedy-drama. Nothing in Common saw Hanks go man-to-man with the legendary Jackie Gleason in The Honeymooner's final movie role before his death.
This was one of Hanks' first more serious roles, although it was still a comedy at heart. Hanks David works in advertising and is enjoying his successful career when he learns he has to start to care for his aging, bitter father after his parents split up.
EVERY TIME WE SAY GOODBYE (1986)
The third movie that Tom Hanks appeared in 1986 was Every Time We Say Goodbye. This movie pushed Hanks out of his comfort zone, a drama film about a non-Jewish member of the Royal Air Force who is stationed in Jerusalem and falls in love with a girl from a Jewish family. The two then have to make sacrifices due to their religious and cultural differences.
DRAGNET (1987)
After making three very different movies in 1986, Tom Hanks starred in just one movie in 1987, and it was a huge comedy film. Dragnet was based on the classic television show of the same name and starred Dan Aykroyd as Sgt. Joe Friday and Tom Hanks as his streetwise partner Pep Streebek. The movie was part-parody but was also a great stand-alone action-comedy itself.
BIG (1988)
Splash was the greatest Tom Hanks movie of the '80s until 1988 changed that when he starred in the film Big. The movie, directed by Penny Marshall, stars Hanks as a 12-year-old who wishes he was big and when he wakes up the next day, he is fully-grown, but still has the mind and spirit of a 12-year-old. He ends up with the dream job at FAO Schwarz but soon longs for his life and his parents.
PUNCHLINE (1988)
The same year that Tom Hanks charmed the world in Big, he also starred in a more dramatic comedy with Punchline. In this movie, he stars as a very talented young stand up comic named Steven Gold, who helps a housewife who wants to break into stand-up comedy herself. Sally Field stars as Lilah, who has the raw talent but needs help with the command of controlling an audience.
THE 'BURBS (1989)
Tom Hanks finished off the '80s with two comedies in 1989. The first was a horror-comedy called The 'Burbs. In this movie, Hanks stars as Ray Peterson, a man on a week-long vacation, spending it at home where he begins to believe that his neighbors, the Klopeks, night be savage murderers. When Ray and his neighbors begin to let their imaginations get away from them, they might not be far from the truth.
TURNER & HOOCH (1989)
The last movie that Tom Hanks made before the '90s saw him starring alongside a dog. In Turner & Hooch, The film starred Hanks as Scott Turner, a California police officer who ends up taking in a new partner, a dog named Hooch that belonged to a long-time officer friend who was murdered. Believe it or not, a TV remake is coming to Disney+.