Likable actors are ten a penny in Hollywood, but some movie stars are particularly endearing, like Dwayne Johnson and Keanu Reeves and Will Smith – and, indeed, Tom Hanks. Hanks has been adored by audiences across the globe for decades.
While he’s occasionally played against type with a gangster role in Road to Perdition and a hard-drinking cynic in A League of Their Own, Hanks usually plays characters that the audience can really get behind. From Captain Phillips to Forrest Gump, these are Hanks’ easiest characters to root for.
Viktor Navorski (The Terminal)
One of Spielberg’s most sentimental movies, The Terminal stars Hanks as Viktor Navorski, a traveler who’s stranded in John F. Kennedy Airport when civil unrest in his fictional nation of Krakozhia makes his passport invalid.
The movie is primarily a fish-out-of-water comedy, with Hanks playing the character’s naivety brilliantly. Throughout the movie, Viktor touches a few other people’s lives and forges strong connections with them, showing himself to be a kind, caring, sensitive guy.
Sam Baldwin (Sleepless In Seattle)
Directed and co-written by the great Nora Ephron, Sleepless in Seattle is one of the most iconic romcoms ever made. It was one of many collaborations between the perfectly matched Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan.
Unlike Hanks’ character in You’ve Got Mail who’s a ruthless business tycoon, there’s nothing unlikable about his character in Sleepless in Seattle. He plays a single father trying to start a new life for himself and his eight-year-old son in Seattle after losing his wife to cancer. It’s incredibly easy to root for him to find happiness.
James B. Donovan (Bridge Of Spies)
One of Hanks and Spielberg’s more underappreciated collaborations, Bridge of Spies is a tense Cold War thriller based on true events. Hanks stars as lawyer James B. Donovan, who’s tasked with representing suspected Soviet spy Rudolf Abel (Mark Rylance) in court.
While Donovan’s superiors – and the rest of the United States – expect him to phone in his defense, Donovan himself believes that Abel is entitled to a fair trial and wants to arrange a sentencing that will reunite him with his wife. His house is vandalized and his family is threatened, but he sticks by his convictions.
Andrew Beckett (Philadelphia)
Hanks received his first of two back-to-back Best Actor wins at the Oscars for playing lawyer Andrew Beckett in Philadelphia, one of the earliest mainstream Hollywood movies to portray homosexuality, homophobia, and the AIDS crisis.
When he’s fired on vague grounds, he believes he was sabotaged so his homophobic superiors would have an excuse to fire him. A lawyer who has to hide his sexuality and AIDS diagnosis from his co-workers and is constantly faced with injustice and discrimination is easy to root for.
Himself (The Simpsons Movie)
The main reason why so many of Hanks’ characters are likable is that Hanks himself is so likable. In The Simpsons Movie, he played himself in a PSA about the new Grand Canyon that will be left in Springfield’s place after Russ Cargill and the EPA blow up the town.
At the beginning of the PSA, he delivers the classic line: “Hello, I’m Tom Hanks. The U.S. government has lost its credibility, so it’s borrowing some of mine.”
Woody (Toy Story)
At the beginning of the first Toy Story movie, Woody isn’t particularly likable. He’s uptight and obnoxious and controlling and condescending – in other words, everything Buzz Lightyear isn’t. When Woody’s fellow toys are all enamored with the cool new Space Ranger, he becomes jealous and bitter.
However, Woody gradually becomes a better friend throughout the first movie, and after that transformation, he’s a straightforward hero who looks out for others in the sequels.
Captain Richard Phillips (Captain Phillips)
Paul Greengrass’ true-to-life thriller Captain Phillips chronicles the harrowing ordeal of Captain Richard Phillips, whose cargo ship was attacked by Somalian pirates. Hanks’ performance as a sea captain staying calm and collected for the sake of his crew in the face of life-threatening danger is extremely powerful.
Phillips handles the whole situation with grace, giving the pirates what they want and sending them on their way, but then gets unexpectedly swept up in a hostage crisis as the pirates take him with them. Thanks to Hanks, this unimaginable terror is alarmingly relatable.
Fred Rogers (A Beautiful Day In The Neighborhood)
In 2019’s A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, a biopic of the universally adored Fred Rogers, Hollywood’s most likable actor played television’s most likable children’s show host.
Marielle Heller’s movie tells Mister Rogers’ story through the eyes of a journalist played by The Americans’ Matthew Rhys, who’s sent to profile Rogers for Esquire. The journalist’s cynicism is contrasted against Rogers’ bubbly optimism.
Forrest Gump (Forrest Gump)
Hanks won his second Oscar in a row for playing the title character in Robert Zemeckis’ Forrest Gump, a lighthearted trip through all the biggest milestones in the 20th century told through the eyes of the kindest, sweetest, most innocent man who ever lived.
Throughout his life, Forrest fights in Vietnam, invests in Apple on the ground floor, runs the entire length of the United States several times over, and meets a bunch of presidents – and, through it all, he remains the same unwaveringly positive guy.
Captain Miller (Saving Private Ryan)
Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan is one of the grittiest, most intense war movies ever made. It tells the story of some American troops’ search for a missing private, but the focus is squarely on Tom Hanks’ Captain Miller. In the opening scene, Miller’s hands are shaking ahead of the D-Day landings. He’s not a glorious warrior; he’s just a schoolteacher who’s been thrust into the deadliest war in human history by circumstances.
Miller’s everyman characterization – paired with the quintessential everyman Hanks performance – offered a refreshingly grounded and sobering counterpoint to the fearless, jingoistic super-soldiers played by John Wayne and Sylvester Stallone in big action movies that glorify war.