Even though he has starred in two of my favorite movies (Forrest Gump, and Joe vs. the Volcano), Tom Hanks is not my favorite actor. And even though he has starred in nearly every genre of film imaginable, from sci-fi thrillers to gangster movies, I do not think of him as an especially diverse actor. I think he is a gifted actor, in some ways, and the scope of his film credits is impressive, but still: whenever I see Tom Hanks performing in a film, it’s hard for me not to see, first and foremost, Tom Hanks performing. By this I mean that, unlike those actors who entirely lose themselves in the role—exhibiting the acting version of what Keats famously called “a negative capability”—Tom Hanks the man is always relatively easy to spot in, through, and beneath every character he plays.
In any other actor, I would take this as the sign of an amateur, that who they are as a person is always somehow apparent—vaguely present—in whatever character they are portraying. With Tom Hanks, however, I think this is part of his appeal, indeed, part of his skill. When Tom Hanks performs a duty-bound World War II Captain, for instance, the fact that you can see Tom Hanks himself projecting through that portrayal allows you, in some strange way, to imagine what it would be for you yourself to be one. When Tom Hanks portrays a desperate castaway stranded on a deserted South Pacific Island, the fact that the cast away is so clearly Tom Hanks, allows you to put yourself in the same shoes, and wonder if you would have fared any better.
Unlike those actors who “become” their character, Tom Hanks seems more intent on “faithfully partnering” with the character to tell their story well.
From a Christian perspective, the term for what I’m trying to describe here, I think, is love. Not romantic love, of course, but one of the other versions of that highest of Christian virtues: “philia” love, maybe, or even “agape.” What makes Tom Hanks’s characters work is not so much the depth of his performance, but the fact that he seems so clearly to love the character he is portraying. You see this show up clearly for the first time, I think, in the movie “Punchline,” a 1988 drama where he plays Steve Gold, a struggling comedian striving to make it big. Hanks’ portrayal of Steve Gold is replete with quirks that will later become signature Tom Hankisms, yet he seems so genuinely to love the character of the struggling comic he is playing, having entered into his story with such appreciation and care, that you find yourself drawn in before you even realize what’s happening. You see the same love evident in his more famous and mature roles. What makes you root so earnestly for Forrest Gump, I think, is that Tom Hanks the actor seems so obviously to love the character, making it almost impossible for you, as the viewer, not to.
There are two lessons Christians might take from this observation, once it’s noticed. On the one hand, the love Tom Hanks brings to his portrayals of his best characters should remind us of the power of love to transform all kinds of human work. Whether your job is film acting or brick-laying, it is possible to do it as an expression of love, and, when we do, it is possible to see that work redeemed.
On the other hand, though, I think Tom Hanks’ loving approach to the characters he plays and the stories he tells through them, could stand as a metaphor, or perhaps a microcosm, for the call of the Christian to lovingly enter into the lives and the experiences of our neighbours, to “faithfully partner with them” in the telling of their stories, and lovingly learn how to see the world through the eyes of the other, as we do.
Earlier I suggested that were he a different kind of actor, there might be something “amateur” in the way Tom Hanks’s true persona “leaks through” in his acting. The word “amateur,” however, literally means “for the love of it…” An amateur, that is to say, is one who pursues their craft, not for the wage, but simply for the love of it. Tom Hanks has been amply compensated for his work as an actor, of course, but given what I’ve said about the obvious love he brings to his roles, perhaps he still is, and maybe always will be, an amateur, in this technical sense of the word.
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