15 of Tom Hanks’s Best Movies

For much of his career, comparisons rained down on Tom Hanks: He was our next Jimmy Stewart, a modern day Gary Cooper, the second coming of Jack Lemon. But as Hanks has built a body of work over five decades, he has shown himself to be peerless while also defining (and redefining) exactly what a Tom Hanks role is.

Hollywood’s perfect goofball boyfriend morphed into our dream dad while also embodying stoic soldiers, cowboys, astronauts, and a whole host of other characters who were fighters and survivors—kind men, hard men, flawed men, and people trying simply to be understood and less alone in this world. Hanks is an actor whose trick has been in making us believe he was both familiar and whoever each role needed him to be, all at the same time; these 15 impactful films not only demonstrate his range but showcase his willingness to take chances and (to use a favorite phrase of his) “throw deep” to accomplish big things—or at least make the misses count.

1. Splash (1984)
2. The Money Pit (1986)
3. Big (1988)
4. The Burbs (1989)
5. A League Of Their Own (1992)
6. Sleepless In Seattle (1993)
7. Philadelphia (1993)
8. Forrest Gump (1994)
9. Toy Story (1995)
10. Apollo 13 (1995)
11. Saving Private Ryan (1998)
12. Cast Away (2000)
13. Road To Perdition (2006)
14. 
    Cloud Atlas (2012)
15. A Beautiful Day In The Neighborhood (2019)

Splash (1984)

Hanks plays a man who falls in love with a mermaid in Splash, a romantic fairytale turned zany heist movie with a reverse Little Mermaid ending. The film, directed by Ron Howard, helped establish Hanks as a leading man after he’d mostly been popping up in TV guest spots following the cancellation of Bosom Buddies.

According to the actor, it was his appearance on Happy Days—in which he kicked the Fonze through a window at Al’s Drive-In—that helped bring him to Howard’s attention. Howard had left the show by that point, but Happy Days writers Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel, who co-wrote Splash, suggested the actor for the role of Allen Bauer.

As Hanks told The Jess Cagle Show in 2023, “No one wanted to work for Disney and no one would take the job. And they {Ganz and Mandel} said ‘Hey, this guy who kicked Fonzie through a plate glass window might be good.’ And so, I ended up auditioning.”

The Money Pit (1986)

Anyone who has ever gotten over their head with a home repair or renovation can relate to The Money Pit, Richard Benjamin’s comedy about a couple stuck in the rubble of a collapsing dream home that threatens everything from their sanity to their relationship. While Joe Dante’s The Burbs is probably the first film that comes to mind when you think of Hanks and comedy-horror, The Money Pit offers a different flavor of domestic terror, trading paranoia for a house seemingly possessed.

Also frightening? Hanks threw himself fully into the role and its accompanying stunts, including the memorable scene when he’s covered in plaster, sliding from a falling chimney to some rickety scaffolding.

Big (1988)

Hanks got nominated for an Oscar for his portrayal of the adult version of a 12-year-old who makes a wish to be, well, big—but he actually turned down his first chance to play the part because he was working on other projects.

A parade names floated in and out of conversation to play the adult Josh Baskin (everyone from Albert Brooks to Gary Busey), but none stuck like Robert de Niro, who left the project because he couldn’t get his desired paycheck.

Once Hanks came onboard, though, he was all in. According to a 2024 People interview with David Moskow, who played the 12-year-old version of Josh, Hanks was “a big kid” on set and took the time to hang out with him and his friends to get a sense of how to dress and act like a pre-teen. That commitment really comes through in the way Hanks plays a kid trapped in an adult’s body with a mix of wonder, moxie, and angst—and why Big is the best of the ’80s body swap movies.

The Burbs (1989)

Dante’s previously mentioned horror-comedy casts Hanks as a stressed-out dad looking to dodge obligations and lounge around the house while on staycation. Unfortunately, his persistent friends and rising paranoia about his new neighbors upend those plans, leading to chaos.

While the vibe on set didn’t match that level of intensity, it does sound like the mix of personalities left a mark on the film. As Dante explained to Paste in a 2024 35th anniversary look back, Hanks didn’t exactly get along with actor Rick Ducommun, who played his character’s neighbor and perpetual shoulder devil, Art. “Rick had a certain abrasiveness that actually kind of ticked off Tom,” said Dante, who credited that “prickly relationship” and his decision to push for casting Ducommun with facilitating “great improv from these guys.” It’s that looseness that gives The Burbs a lot of its charm—and why it’s become an enduring cult classic that satirizes the suspicions and blame-the-outsiders mentality that still runs wild.

A League Of Their Own (1992)

Hanks has found success working with some directors multiple times, but few collaborations have been as impactful as the one he had with Big director Penny Marshall, who changed Hanks’s career with the baseball comedy A League Of Their Own, in which Hanks played weathered ex-ballplayer Jimmy Dugan.

At the start, Hanks’s Jimmy is barely dealing with his flaws and mistakes while taking on his new gig as the manager of an All-American Girls Professional Baseball League team. Eventually, though, he finds empathy and purpose in the background of a larger story about women ballplayers coming together during WWII while entertaining growing crowds in need of a distraction.

Hanks is vocal about the effect of A League Of Their Own on his career, telling The New York Times in 2022, “I had done enough romantic leads in enough movies and had experienced enough compromise to say, ‘I’m not even going to read those scripts anymore.’ So then you hold out for something that represents more of the artist you want to be.” Hanks credited Marshall with challenging him to play a character outside his comfort zone who had glimpsed but lost hold of promised greatness.

Sleepless In Seattle (1993)

This may feel like a bit of a zag after talking about Hanks’s retraction from romantic leads to take on more complex roles, but go with it: Sleepless In Seattle is a Hall of Fame romcom and a meta-commentary on movie love stories. It’s a film about fate and our need for connection while being honest about loneliness, loss, and the worry that you’re making the safe but wrong choice.

That Hanks and Meg Ryan wound up starring in this film is, in and of itself, a bit fateful. Initially, Ryan was supposed to star opposite her then-husband Dennis Quaid. At another point, Ryan’s pregnancy almost kept her from making the film, which was offered to Kim Basinger and Julia Roberts. Luckily, Ryan swung back around and Hanks signed on.  

Philadelphia (1993)

Oscar-winning director Jonathan Demme had bold ambitions for 1993’s Philadelphia. Inspired by his own friend’s illness, he decided to make a story about the AIDS epidemic and the discrimination experienced by those who were afflicted. He felt that people had their heads in the sand about the crisis—and he wanted to make the film for them. “We wanted to reach people who don’t know people with AIDS, who look down on people with AIDS,” Demme told Rolling Stone in 1994. “When I read in the papers that Philadelphia was ‘targeted for the malls,’ part of me goes, ‘Oh, my God, that sounds so calculated.’ But we were calculated about it. We calculated what audience we aspired to.”

The director tapped Hanks to play a discriminated-against gay attorney fighting for justice in court while dying of AIDS. Hanks has said that he realized no one feared him when he was cast in Philadelphia, so he understood his appeal to Demme—as well as the overall message that the tragedy of AIDS could affect anyone. “I’m the next-door neighbor in that thing. I’m the guy you work with at the bank. I’m the other teacher that teaches American history but I’m dying of AIDS because of who I love,” he told Josh Horowitz on the Happy Sad Confused podcast at the end of 2024.

In the end, the film reached its intended broad audience and won Hanks his first Oscar for Best Actor while showcasing his ability to immerse himself in a fully dramatic role.

Forrest Gump (1994)

To some, Forrest Gump is a cloying speed-run through history, inserting Hanks’s character into major moments in a hollow way. To others, the film remains a comfort watch with a heartful (and Oscar-winning) Hanks performance at the center.

While agreement is hard to come by, we should all be thankful that a planned Forrest Gump sequel never happened. Like the first movie, the second would have been adapted from a Winston Groom novel (in this case, 1995’s Gump And Co., the sequel to the 1986 original book), but screenwriter Eric Roth updated the story to feature more events rooted in the ’90s. That includes Forrest hiding in the back of O.J. Simpson’s Ford Bronco and witnessing the Oklahoma City Bombing.

The script was turned in on September 10, 2001. By the next day, the world was topsy-turvy and the film’s stakeholders were out. “When 9/11 occurred … everything felt meaningless,” Roth told Yahoo in 2019. 

Toy Story (1995)

In Toy Story, Hanks voices Woody, the affable, ever-loyal but flailing and excitable cowboy doll at the heart of a community of toys that come to life (with anxieties in tow) whenever humans aren’t around. Nothing Hanks has done endures quite like Toy Story, which made CG animation mainstream and launched a franchise that is deeply meaningful to people across multiple generations. And it never would have happened if not for Turner & Hooch.

As Hanks explained in a BBC1 Radio interview, the Toy Story production team introduced him to Woody by way of a demo featuring a V1 version of the character with dialogue from his 1989 K-9/cop comedy. “The marriage of the outraged voice of mine inside this outraged body of a toy was ... it was just undeniably great,” said Hanks, who quickly signed on.

Apollo 13 (1995)

From Forrest Gump to Toy Story and later films like The Polar Express and Here, Hanks has often been at the forefront of film’s technological advances. Ron Howard’s Apollo 13—which told the story of three real-life astronauts who got marooned in space in 1970—was no different. Howard was meticulous in recreating key settings from the actual Apollo 13 mission with practical artistry. He also went up with his cast in a special NASA-approved plane to get fleeting moments of weightlessness in a process that sounds like a vomitous hell. Howard then intercut that footage with shots of simulated weightlessness filmed on the ground, making it seem like the actors really were stuck in space. That commitment to realism contributed to the palpable claustrophobia and mounting desperation as we watch the crew fight to survive.

Saving Private Ryan (1998)

In just 10 years, Hanks went from playing large adult children—sometimes literally—to playing roles that demanded a believable level of gravitas. (He also expanded his work behind the camera, serving as a producer of the TV miniseries From The Earth To The Moon and as a director with 1996’s That Thing You Do.) And nothing exemplifies that career transformation like his first film with director Steven Spielberg.

In Saving Private Ryan, Hanks plays Army Captain Miller, a WWII soldier aching to get home to his wife and life as a teacher. Captain Miller’s story ends with sacrifice in service to his country, the men in his battalion, and their mission to rescue the last remaining son of a family that has already lost his brothers. It’s one of cinema’s most stirring death scenes, amplified by Janusz Kamiński’s amazing cinematography.

In 1988, it would have been almost unthinkable for Hanks to win a role out from Harrison Ford and Mel Gibson, but those were the names that were rumored to have been in consideration before Spielberg tapped Hanks to play Captain Miller.

Cast Away (2000)

Like Apollo 13, Robert Zemeckis’s Cast Away leans into isolation and a fight for survival. Unlike Apollo 13, though, Hanks is completely alone on-screen for approximately 95 percent of the film. The actor plays Chuck, a FedEx employee who ends up stranded on a deserted island after a plane crash, and Hanks underwent an intense physical transformation for the role, losing 50 pounds during a one-year break in filming.

Cast Away features limited dialogue and even periods without a score, heightening Chuck’s vulnerability and despair as he comes undone. As Hanks told ABC News in 2001, the film is, “about a different brand of loneliness,” adding that his character is, “completely removed from any of the distractions that fill up our lives. That’s where Chuck begins to crack, and begins to lose the battle of his own desperation.” That battle and eventual triumph of the character’s indomitable spirit helped Cast Away become a classic.

Road To Perdition (2006)

Hanks playing against his usual type works remarkably well in this Sam Mendes-directed road movie about a gangster (a murderous Hanks, complete with Tommy-gun and a pencil-thin mustache), his son, and a crime spree aimed at disrupting the operation of the mentor who violently betrayed him.

Based on a graphic novel of the same name, Mendes’s film gave Hanks the chance to mine darkness and violence in a way he never had before, playing into something that Mendes sensed was waiting to be unleashed on screen. The actor was “allowing the darkness and the real rage and anger that he’s capable of allowing out, but, at the same time, he understood the character’s inarticulacy and his inability to express himself,” Mendes said in the film’s DVD commentary.

Cloud Atlas (2012)

In the last 20-plus years of his career, Hanks has worked with his usual collaborators, but he’s also branched out, working with everyone from Mendes to the Coen Bros, Wes Anderson, and Baz Luhrmann. He has also continued to push past preconceived notions about the kind of films and roles he’s supposed to be interested in. That has never been more true than in Cloud Atlas, a sprawling film from Tom Tykwer and the Wachowskis about destiny and connection across time in which Hanks played multiple roles.

Sadly, Cloud Atlas missed with a lot of critics and was a notable bomb at the box office. But none of that seems to matter to Hanks, who has been a vocal supporter of the film from pre-production to years after its release.

In 2021, Hanks told Bill Simmons that Cloud Atlas was one of his top three on-set experiences and that it was made “on a hope and a dream and nothing but a circle of love.” In 2017, he told The Guardian that Cloud Atlas “altered my entire consciousness … it’s the only movie I’ve been in that I’ve seen more than twice. And it didn’t do any business. And there’s nothing you can do about it. And you must allow yourself a week of thinking, jeez, I’m so bummed out. But that’s not the only reason to do it. It’s lovely when it all works and you get ballyhooed. But if it’s 50/50, you’re way ahead of the game. In reality, I think it’s more like 80/20; 80 percent of what you do doesn’t work.” It’s heartening to see an actor stand by a risk that didn’t pay off.

A Beautiful Day In The Neighborhood (2019)

Hanks’s casting as pop culture’s gentlest and nicest figure, Fred Rogers, seems like destiny—but the actor turned down the chance to play the children’s TV pioneer three times because he wasn’t interested in the lazy version of the role, where nostalgia and myth took the wheel. He eventually agreed to sign on after Marielle Heller—who saw the film as a “character piece”—was hired to direct.

“I never wanted it to be an imitation,” she told Backstage. “It was about getting his essence right. If we did an imitation, it would feel like a distance between him and the audience, and it was so important that he was really present and right there to be close to.” Instead, Hanks’s version of Rogers is a human who chose to be kind. As with a lot of is best roles, the magic is so subtle as to be missed—but isn’t that the point?

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