Words matter. These are the best Tom Hanks Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
I would not want to live in a country that would have me as a leader in any sort of political bent.
There is something basic about protecting land by taking it off the market. People should be able to enjoy where they live while at the same time protect the plants and animals around them.
As long as you as an individual… can convince yourself that in order to move forward as best you can you have to be optimistic, you can be described as ‘one of the faithful,’ one of those people who can say, ‘Well, look, something’s going to happen! Let’s just keep trying. Let’s not give up.
At the end of the day it’s got to be a good movie, it’s got to be a funny movie, and it’s got to make people think, ‘Hey, I couldn’t have spent my time any better.’
My kid could get a bad X-ray and I could get a call from the doctor saying I have something growing in my bum and that would change my perspective on everything instantaneously, on what is and what is not important.
It’s just as hard… staying happily married as it is doing movies.
Reading a script is usually as exciting as reading a boilerplate legal document, so when you read one that makes you feel as if you’re seeing the movie, you know it’s something different.
E-mail is far more convenient than the telephone, as far as I’m concerned. I would throw my phone away if I could get away with it.
I think it’s better to feel good than to look good.
The same way that I know that I’ll never do a movie as good or as celebrated as ‘Forrest Gump,’ I know that I’ll never do a movie as bad as ‘Bonfire of the Vanities.’
I always wanted to play Lestrade of Scotland Yard ’cause he’s a buffoon that gets to wear a uniform. I thought that would be fun.
It’s always a combination of physics and poetry that I find inspiring. It’s hard to wrap your head around things like the Hubble scope.
One thing that was amazing about World War II was that everybody signed up for the duration plus six months. Fliers got to leave combat after 25 missions, or 35 missions, but other than that, you were in it. You were part of the great effort, until, oh boy, six months after it was over.
Everybody has something that chews them up and, for me, that thing was always loneliness. The cinema has the power to make you not feel lonely, even when you are.
I’m not interested in doing something edgy with a capital E just so everyone knows, ‘Oh, OK, now he’s showing us he can do edgy.’
I think 80 percent of the population are really great, caring people who will help you and tell you the truth. That’s just the way it is. And I think 20 percent of the population are crooks and liars. It’s just a fact.
I did a ‘Love Boat!’ And based on my trip on the ‘Love Boat,’ I said, ‘I’d just as soon not do ‘Fantasy Island.’
If there are nine guys auditioning and they’re all gorgeous, I have an advantage, because gorgeous guys are a dime a dozen. But if they need someone else – like a goofy guy with bad hair who is just okay – then that’s me. And finally, the other 2 percent who audition are geniuses that I could never touch.
Repertory theater is all about being part of the whole, one of the many colors in this vast palette.
I do not want to admit to the world that I can be a bad person. It is just that I don’t want anyone to have false expectations. Moviemaking is a harsh, volatile business, and unless you can be ruthless, too, there’s a good chance that you are going to disappear off the scene pretty quickly.
Growing up in northern California has had a big influence on my love and respect for the outdoors. When I lived in Oakland, we would think nothing of driving to Half Moon Bay and Santa Cruz one day and then driving to the foothills of the Sierras the next day.
If you have to have a job in this world, a high-priced movie star is a pretty good gig.
I think I’m lucky that I had kids as spread out as much as I did, ’cause my son, my oldest, was born when I was 21. And my youngest is 15 now. He was born when I was 40, you know?
If they could offer up a way to go to the moon that wouldn’t kill you, I’d sign up.
What we’re doing with Band of Brothers is trying to put it into human terms, so it is not just a flickering, black and white myth on a screen, it is a resonant story. I want the audience to recognize themselves in these men. They’re not just mythic heroes.
If you’re funny, if there’s something that makes you laugh, then every day’s going to be okay.
‘Forrest Gump’ was great, it was fabulous. It lasted much longer than anybody thought, and brought me a degree of attention that no human being on the face of the planet deserves.
If it wasn’t hard, everyone would do it. It’s the hard that makes it great.
Prior to Saving Private Ryan I never worked with men. I was always working with some babe, and it was always about falling in love, and it just got turned around. I’m not looking for any particular kind of story. I wait until it comes across my desk.
I went to college because I didn’t have anywhere else to go and it was a fabulous hang. And while I was there I was exposed to this world that I didn’t know was possible.
But television, when I was doing it, was all about scoring. You had to make these jokes bang, do whatever you could to make the material really pop. And if it didn’t, there was something wrong with the material, or with you.
But look, I was born in 1956, the peak year for births in US history. I think I’m very representative of many of the thought processes my generation have been through and, by and large, people of my age have had their imprint planted on the consciousness of western society for a long time.
Now, learning how to make a movie is something you can figure out in about an afternoon. The physics of it, the marks, the lights, etc. What’s hard to do is to suspend your own feelings of self consciousness. The natural actors can do that; they can become part of a characterization and learn how to maintain it.
Tweeting is like sending out cool telegrams to your friends once a week.
Actors with political views are a dime a dozen.
Some people go to bed at night thinking, ‘That was a good day.’ I am one of those who worries and asks, ‘How did I screw up today?’
The nature of motion capture is only going to work for certain films. It’s not going to put any other type of movies out of business.
That’s what’s nice about directing a film and having it done: There’s nothing more I can do about it. It’s done. That’s it. All I can do is let it go and hope that people are kind to it.
I have high blood sugars, and Type 2 diabetes is not going to kill me. But I just have to eat right, and exercise, and lose weight, and watch what I eat, and I will be fine for the rest of my life.
Acting still rings my bell as much as it did in high school. Plus, I can now indulge my interests as a producer as well. My work is more fun than fun but, best of all, it’s still very scary. You are always walking some kind of high wire.
The nature of the movies is different than it was five years ago, and they’re all driven by the possibilities of CGI, which means you can make anything happen on screen that you can possibly desire.
My job has always been to hold a mirror up to nature.
My wife keeps on telling me my worst fault is that I keep things to myself and appear relaxed. But I am really in a room in my own head and not hearing a thing anyone is saying.
I want to have a good time myself. I don’t want to dread going to work no matter what the gig is. I think, selfishly, I will make sure that I have a good time; how about that?
I must say that I do wrestle with the amount of money I make, but at the end of the day what am I gonna say? I took less money so Rupert Murdoch could have more?
There’s a difference between solitude and loneliness. I can understand the concept of being a monk for a while.
But I also think all of the great stories in literature deal with loneliness. Sometimes it’s by way of heartbreak, sometimes it’s by way of injustice, sometimes it’s by way of fate. There’s an infinite number of ways to examine it.
And I’m not apolitical – I’m very specific in my politics. But a lot of the time it’s nobody’s business unless you’re over at my house having dinner.
As a young man, even if I was going to see a play or a film by myself, I didn’t feel like I was alone. There was something that was unfolding up there that brought me into it. And I recognised that. For those two hours, it made me feel like I belonged to something really good.
It just so happens that my body type and my lifestyle gives me a preclusion for high blood sugars.