Tom Hanks has transformed himself from the party dude of Bachelor Party to the romantic lead of Sleepless in Seattle to the war hero of Saving Private Ryan to the six different characters he plays, amusingly, in Cloud Atlas.
With over 80 acting credits to his name, it’s hard to choose the best Tom Hanks titles. Today we take a look at the best Tom Hanks movies…
4. Cast Away (2000)
The closest Hanks has gotten to a Robert De Niro–like physical transformation, Cast Away found the star playing a FedEx executive who goes through a personal metamorphosis after he’s the lone survivor of a plane crash. Taking time off from shooting so that he could lose a massive amount of weight for the island sequences, Hanks exudes the sense of spiritual isolation that first maroons the character but then gives him a new reason to go on living. This might be his most intimate and elemental performance, his primary scene partner being a volleyball, and Hanks finds a raw, slightly terrifying urgency within his good-guy persona that suggests that even the best of us have a breaking point.
