Tom Hanks has had an illustrious career, and it’s still going strong. He has starred in, by my count, 59 movies over a 40-year career (1984-2024). That’s about 1.5 movies/year. But as much as he’s done, a few things stick out. For instance, he is the definition of A-list movie-star, yet he’s never been in a superhero movie. Let’s take a look at Tom’s entire career and break down the details.

Scatter Plot of Movie Ratings

What stands out for me is the incredible run of success Tom Hanks had starting in 1992 with A Leauge of their Own. Hanks went on an astounding streak of fifteen consecutive movies, up to The Terminal in 2004, that are all above the (RottenTomatoes Audience) trendline. Included in this run were Forrest Gump, Toy Story, Finding Private Ryan, and The Green Mile. I can’t think of any other actor or actress that had a run of success as that.

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If you look at the RottenTomatoes Audience scores, you can also see that for the first 16 years of his career, he was in fourteen movies and only four of them reached the trendline. Splash and The Money Pit straddle the trendline, while Big and The Burbs climb just a little above it. Maybe there is something to be said for the 10,000 hours of training before becoming an expert at something. 🙂

All Movies with Ratings

You can explore Tom Hankses entire filmography below. Click on the column headers to resort the table and see what his best and worst movies are.

Character Types

I mentioned that Tom Hanks has never played a superhero, or been in a superhero movie at all. So what kind of characters does Tom typically play? Below is a breakdown of the role types into groups.

Military/Law Enforcement (11)
Captain Miller (Saving Private Ryan) – WWII Captain
Captain Krause (Greyhound) – Naval Commander
Captain Phillips (Captain Phillips) – Merchant Marine
Paul Edgecomb (Green Mile) – Prison guard
Carl Hanratty (Catch Me) – FBI Agent
Det. Turner (Turner & Hooch) – Police detective
Streebek (Dragnet) – Police detective
Captain Kidd (News of the World) – Former Confederate Captain
Charlie Wilson (Charlie Wilson’s War) – Congressman involved in military operations
Jim Lovell (Apollo 13) – Astronaut/Naval aviator
Sully Sullenberger (Sully) – Former military pilot

Professionals/Academics (8)
Robert Langdon (Da Vinci Code, Angels & Demons, Inferno) – Professor
Ben Bradlee (The Post) – Newspaper editor
Andrew Beckett (Philadelphia) – Lawyer
Sherman McCoy (Bonfire Vanities) – Banker
Walt Disney (Saving Mr. Banks) – Studio executive
Fred Rogers (Beautiful Day) – TV host
Steven Gold (Punchline) – Comedian
David Basner (Nothing in Common) – Advertising executive

Caregivers/Mentors (6)
Geppetto (Pinocchio) – Craftsman/father
Finch – Robot builder/dog caretaker
Woody (Toy Story series) – Leader/protector of toys
Otto (Man Called Otto) – Helping neighbors
Jimmy Dugan (League of Their Own) – Baseball coach
Josh (Big) – Adult version of child

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Ordinary People in Extraordinary Situations (7)
Chuck Noland (Cast Away) – Stranded survivor
Viktor Navorski (Terminal) – Stranded traveler
Forrest Gump – Accidental historical figure
Joe (Joe vs Volcano) – Man who thinks he’s dying
Allen Bauer (Splash) – Man who falls for a mermaid
Ray Peterson (The ‘Burbs) – Suburban dad investigating neighbors
Walter Fielding (Money Pit) – Homeowner dealing with house disasters

Historical Figures (6)
Walt Disney
Fred Rogers
Jim Lovell
Sully Sullenberger
Charlie Wilson
Colonel Parker

Antagonists/Morally gray (3)
Colonel Parker (Elvis) – Exploitative manager
Bailey (The Circle) – Manipulative tech CEO
Professor Dorr (The Ladykillers) – Criminal mastermind

Widower (3)
A Man Called Otto (Otto)
Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close
Sleepless in Seattle

Analysis

What stands out to me is how infrequently Tom plays an unlikable character. There are only three movies where he played a character that was less than flattering. But, we could expand this to if we consider movies such as A Man Called Otto where he is unliked by his neighbors, until the character undergoes a catharsis and becomes much beloved. I think we have to stick with how the character is perceived at the end of the story to make judgment.

Awards & Recognition

Oscar Nominations

Most Decorated Films

Box Office Analysis

Domestic

It’s ironic that Tom Hankses domestic box-office pull is trending down, while his movie ratings are trending up. (See above.) However, there are a few things to consider. For starters, Tom Hanks never went for the blockbuster roles. He happened to make some fantastically popular movies, but they were never the sort of movie that you would expect to see compete with the Marvel Cinematic Universe or such. To this day, the only franchise Tom Hanks has been involved with is Toy Story. He’s never played the same character twice, with the exception of Robert Langdon from The Divinci Code and Angels & Demons.

Worldwide

Tom Hankses worldwide results are trending up, just slightly. Much of that is due to the outsized popularity of Toy Story 3/4, and The Divinci Code. The Divinci Code represents the largest difference between domestic and international box office earnings.

Genre Breakdown

No shocker here. Dramas are, by far, the most common movie genre that Tom Hanks is in—almost doubling the next most common genre: comedy. And the majority of Tom Hankses comedy movies were in the beginning of his career. The last comedy he made was Larry Crowne in 2011.

Number of movies/year

Tom Hanks has been a remarkably consistent performer. In his forty-year career—thus far—he has only missed releasing a movie in seven of those years. And with movie releases being somewhat variable, some of that is probably due to studio decisions.

Movie Timeperiods

I don’t expect that this data is precise; there are some educated guesses about the period in which some of these movies take place. Since Tom Hankses career really started in the 1980s and 1990s, most of his movies take place in “present-day” for their release date. What’s interesting are the movies that are outside of that window. Tom Hanks has made a lot of historical movies and played a few notable historical characters.

You could also argue that the Toy Story movies mostly take place in the 1990s, even though they’re not in our universe.

Directors

Here is a list of movie Directors Tom Hanks has worked with on multiple projects. Zemeckis, Spielberg, and Ron Howard appear to be his favorites. He has even directed himself twice.

*Note: Cloud Atlas was co-directed by Lana & Lilly Wachowski along with Tom Tykwer

Other Actors

Surprisingly, Tom Hanks hasn’t worked with the same actors with great frequency. Outside of the Toy Story franchise, the only actor he has starred with more than twice is Meg Ryan in Sleepless in Seattle (1993), You’ve Got Mail (1998), and Ithica (2015).

The Perfect Tom Hanks Movie

Based on all of this data, the perfect Tom Hanks movie would be where he played a soldier in a drama/romance opposite Meg Ryan set in the 1980s, directed by either Steven Spielberg, Robert Zemeckis, or Ron Howard.

Special Thanks

A big shoutout to Anthropic/Sonnet 3.5 for doing the heavy lifting on the data crunching and creating the charts.