(narrator) The Academy Awards, March 1995.

Inside the Shrine Auditorium, the nominees are being read out for Best Actor.

If 38-year-old Tom Hanks wins, then he will become the first man to take two in a row in over 50 years.

(wondrous music) Hanks, of course, wins, confirming him as the foremost star of our times.

An actor with the Midas touch, whose films have earned an extraordinary ten billion dollars, and who is near universally admired as the nice guy who came first.

(Doc) Tom is one of the nicest people I have ever had the pleasure to work with.

(Bert) I always feel comfortable around him, and I feel like I'm just with a friend.

(Helen) He's just such a warm-hearted, fun, interesting guy.

(narrator) In this film, we explore the surprising story of Tom Hanks, a man whose dysfunctional childhood left him isolated and lonely... (Mary) He had a sort of itinerant childhood from parent to parent.

(narrator) ...destined to repeat his parent's mistakes... (David G.) Things just were falling apart between him and his first wife.

(narrator) ...but who escaped his past with comedy, becoming one of the '80s' most lovable stars... (triumphant music) ...before tapping into his inner loneliness to create some of the most memorable movie characters -of all.

-He had, like, tears running down.

He said, "You can't fake that, Paulie."

♪ (narrator) This is the story of Tom Hanks, Hollywood's most acclaimed, most successful, most loved ordinary guy.

♪ (mellow music) ♪ Tom was born in Concord in Northern California in 1956 to parents Amos and Janet.

From the start, it was a difficult childhood.

(David G.) A lot of people would imagine that Tom Hanks would have a kind of very middle class, normal, ordinary background, but that's quite the opposite actually.

♪ His parents split up when he was still quite young, and his dad went on to marry twice more.

In fact, between them, his parents married seven times.

(narrator) Hanks's father was also carrying the trauma of a devastating event in his own childhood, when aged 8, he witnessed the murder of his father in a fight.

(dramatic music) It was this traumatized man who would raise Tom and not his mother Janet.

♪ (David G.) Once his parents split up, he went off with his father, as did his brother and sister, which is quite unusual.

♪ Dad then remarried in Reno to a lady who herself had five children.

(narrator) And the turmoil had a profound effect on young Tom, who spent much of his childhood fighting loneliness.

(David G.) It must have been incredibly difficult for him as a kid.

Imagine it, 10 years old, you've suddenly got a new mother.

You have all these new step brothers and sisters, and at one time there was eight of them living in a basement bedroom, one room, and they had curtains dividing the spaces, and these are people he didn't know before.

(contemplative music) But he had that great advantage when you're doing that kind of thing, and that was a sense of humor.

He was funny, he was the funny kid.

(upbeat music) ♪ (Tom) I've always been, like, a funny guy in class, in all honesty, it was probably second grade or something like that, which you know, I heard my older brother say something, and then I said it in class and people laughed.

And there are some people who are funny in this world.

I guess I'm one of them, you know, more or less.

(narrator) In his teens, this funny but lonely boy discovered the perfect outlet for funny, lonely people.

♪ (Tom) When I was in school I ended up going to the theater around the San Francisco Bay area alone because I couldn't get anybody to go with me, and seeing the, you know, great plays and, you know, great theaters, I'd--I had wanted to--to work in that arena.

(soft rock music) (narrator) Aged 20, Hanks was studying Theater Arts at nearby Sacramento State University.

There he met fellow student Susan Dillingham and they started dating.

♪ (David G.) And then they got some news that really, really knocked them for six in that Susan was pregnant and they were both 20 years old.

Suddenly thoughts of family, thoughts of home, thoughts of settling down, these weren't part of his life's plan, but there you have it.

Life got really real.

(narrator) Hanks quit college for his first theater job.

♪ He would be an acting intern at the Great Lakes Shakespeare Festival in Cleveland.

♪ (jazz music) Although he had to leave his pregnant partner in California, the pressure of impending fatherhood didn't show to his fellow interns.

(Bert) So, we had our first meeting, and all the interns were gathered there, didn't know a soul.

We were all a little nervous, you know, meeting new people.

And there was a guy in a corner just acting a little goofier and being a little louder than the rest of us, and I thought, "Who is this guy?"

(Mary) We interns would sit around late into the night and we'd invariably end up with Tom and Bert Goldstein.

(Holly) Tom and Bert all the time.

(Mary) And they would do the Steve Martin routines -from Saturday Night Live.

-Oh yeah, all the time.

(Mary) And I--I didn't have a TV in college, you know, so I didn't know Steve Martin, and no offense to Steve, but when I did finally see Steve Martin, I was disappointed 'cause Tom was so much funnier.

(narrator) And it wasn't long before Hanks's charisma made an impact on stage, too.

(George) We just gradually watched him become better and better, to go from an intern to the leading young actor of a festival in literally one season later is remarkable.

(sirens blaring) (narrator) In 1978, the brilliant young actor moved to America's theater capital, New York City.

(sirens blaring) (upbeat music) ♪ He was soon joined by Susan, now his wife, and their young son, Colin... ♪ ...responsibilities that kept Hanks from partying.

♪ But early nights do not guarantee success.

(Bert) I went to New York almost exact same time he did.

We lived just blocks away from each other.

And he was a young father at the time, so he had a lot more pressure on him to make money.

(David G.) They were a young couple with a young kid in a very precarious profession, and it took its toll.

(solemn jazz music) (Bert) It's scary.

You're up against a lot.

You go to your first audition and there's 50 guys there that look like you.

You've waited three hours to get in.

The city was expensive.

♪ (George) We were all poor, we had--and I--and I mean that.

You know, we were living on $75 a week on unemployment.

(Mary) I went to visit Tom at his apartment and he said, "Would you like something to eat?"

And he opened the cupboards and there was a box of Saltine crackers and some peanut butter, and that's all that was in there.

But because, you know, he was starving, and he had a kid.

(narrator) By the summer of 1980, Hanks's family were penniless, and his career was going nowhere.

Tom needed a break and fast.

♪ (rattling) New York, 1980.

(ambient music) 23-year-old actor Tom Hanks is struggling to put food on the table for his young wife and son.

♪ So Tom was doing all these auditions, usual rounds of relentless daily slog of turning up at these studios and walking away downhearted.

But one day, as it sometimes does, he got the breakthrough.

♪ (Bert) I remember he called me, he said, "Yeah, I'm flying to LA to test for a pilot," and I said "Oh great," and you know.

Then he came back and I guess a couple of weeks later he said "I got it, I'm moving."

And I was disappointed that he was leaving New York.

(mellow music) ♪ (narrator) Tom had landed his first TV role in a sitcom called Bosom Buddies about two men who disguised themselves as women to live in the only place they can afford, a women's only hotel.

♪ (Tom) It wasn't really a conscious decision more than, you know, you find yourself in a position where I had a family and-- and I had a shrinking bank account, and I had rent.

♪ And so when the opportunity came up to do TV, I wasn't about to pass it up.

♪ (David C.) Tom was particularly good at just about everything.

He was very good physically.

He was really good verbally.

(triumphant music) (narrator) The first season was a moderate success, but it wasn't to last.

(David C.) We got a back order for six more shows.

There was a little celebration on stage, and Tom said, "Oh, it's all gravy."

You know, he was very grateful to have a few more shows to do, and then it got cancelled.

♪ (narrator) Hanks was unemployed again, and more starring roles proved hard to come by.

So he took whatever bit-parts he could find.

♪ He did do a very small part in Happy Days... (upbeat music) ...which was a very popular show at the time, in which Ron Howard, then an actor, was one of the stars.

♪ (narrator) Tom spent the next year guest starring in sitcoms, keeping his head above water, but only just.

♪ His old Happy Days co-star, Ron Howard, would change everything.

In 1983, he started casting for a film he would direct called Splash.

(David G.) Michael Keaton, Burt Reynolds, Chevy Chase, some big stars of the time initially were up for the part, but turned it down.

But Ron Howard just remembered Tom and he remembered the energy he brought to the part in Happy Days.

Ron Howard felt that he was right.

♪ (Linda) Well, we're given the script.

It just sounded like, you know, a fun film to work on, you know, a kind of fantasy kind of film, and looking forward to doing it.

(energetic music) ♪ (narrator) Hanks would star opposite Daryl Hannah in his first Hollywood leading man role.

♪ (Mary) Splash represented the beginning for me of seeing Tom's work begin to deepen, and that--that sort of softness came through, that tenderness.

I was, uh, blown away by it because he was so good.

And now he had made this transition from television to the movies, which a lot of actors are not able to do.

(announcer) From the first laugh, critics were hooked.

(Daryl) My name is (squeaking).

(announcer) "Splash is screamingly funny," says Sneak Preview's Jeffrey Lyons.

Newsweek calls it "a romantic comedy that is truly romantic and truly comic."

(narrator) Splash was the surprise hit of 1984, earning $70 million at the box office.

(Tom) You know, it comes out and then is this thing that almost enters into the national conscience.

Now, who knew?

All we knew that we were going to try to do this thing as uniquely and differently as we can, and I was just thrilled out of my socks to once again have a job as an actor where a lot was going to be demanded of me over a long period of time.

I mean, I was-- you know, I was thrilled, but at the same time I was scared because, you know, who knows what was gonna happen?

(solemn music) ♪ (narrator) As Tom's career took off, his marriage was falling apart.

♪ (David C.) It was difficult for Tom because he is a devoted family guy and really loves his kids, and I know it was hard for him that things just were falling apart between him and his first wife.

♪ (David G.) Suddenly his own children had a broken family, two parents going different ways, and he knew how that felt.

So I think that was especially tough.

(narrator) Despite the turmoil at home, Hanks's career went from strength to strength.

(upbeat music) ♪ He followed Splash with a cluster of hit comedies, including Bachelor Party and Dragnet.

I found the snake.

♪ (Julie) Tom Hanks, he became a type.

If you had a romantic comedy, a rom-com, he'd be the guy.

He could pull off kind of goofy comedies and make them slightly better than they were.

(peppy music) ♪ (narrator) And in one of these goofy movies, Volunteers, he would meet someone very special thanks to the casting decisions of Director Nicholas Meyer.

(Nicholas) I kept interviewing and re-interviewing and auditioning actress after actress, known and not known.

This went on for weeks.

And at one point I had a friend, she said, "Well, you should take a look at my friend Rita Wilson.

She might fill the bill."

She sent in Rita, who astonished me, and I said to Tom, "You know, you're going to love her," which he then proceeded to do.

(narrator) For Tom, the connection was immediate.

He and Rita married in 1988, and in that same year his star would rise further thanks to a little movie called Big about a 12-year-old boy who dreams of becoming an adult.

(whimsical music) I wish I were big.

(energetic music) (narrator) Hanks's performance was loved by crew, critics, and audiences.

♪ Mom, I made this wish on a machine and it turned me into a grown up.

(narrator) Big quickly became one of the box office hits of 1988 and earned Tom his first Oscar nomination.

(cheerful piano music) (announcer) You'll never forget Tom Hanks...

It's beluga.

♪ (coughing) (announcer) ...in Big.

♪ (narrator) But Hanks's Hollywood rollercoaster was far from over.

Big may have taken Tom Hanks to the top, but once there, he seemed unsure what to do next.

It's always hard to follow up a success like Big and he didn't really.

There were a bunch of films that were, you know, okay.

I think perhaps just as importantly, he didn't particularly love them either, and he couldn't really see where his career was going.

He was making money, living a very nice lifestyle, happy with Rita, but I think he needed more.

(narrator) After starring opposite a dog in Turner & Hooch, Hanks got wind of a more sophisticated part.

(bright music) (Julie) Peter Guber, who was a very big-time Hollywood producer at that time had bought the rights to The Bonfire of the Vanities, the Tom Wolfe book that was the big sensation of the 1980s.

And they were looking for somebody to play Sherman McCoy.

He's one of those protagonists that you love to hate.

Ugh, he's horrible.

(quirky music) The producer at that time decided the only way that Warner Brothers could make this movie was to have Sherman McCoy be bad, but also not so bad, and he thought in his mind the only person who could play that role was Tom Hanks.

♪ I think he saw this movie as a real opportunity to show that he had the gravitas.

(narrator) Tom signed up to play a despicable banker in the prestige project of the year, and quickly regretted it.

♪ (Linda) Bonfire of the Vanities, a very difficult film to work on.

(Julie) I think the critics had an idea of who that person should be, not sort of Mr. Every-Man, and so I think he probably was miscast in the roll.

(announcer) No one could resist him, not his mistress... (Maria) This could be the best sex I've had in a long time.

(announcer) ...not even his dog.

(Bill) It's raining and he's not happy about it, Mr. McCoy.

(Tom) Neither am I, Bill.

(Julie) Bonfire of the Vanities was declared to be the biggest flop of the decade.

Became a symbol of everything that was wrong with Hollywood.

(narrator) Bonfire cost nearly $50 million and made less than $16 million at the box office.

Tom's attempt to rebrand himself had backfired catastrophically.

(energetic music) He had that question about where to go from there, and many stars have seen their star rise and then disappear never to be seen again.

So I think at that time he perhaps took a very wise decision and stepped back and kind of had a re-look at where he was.

(narrator) It was time for Hanks to reassess his career.

His next choice of role would be crucial.

As the 90s dawned, Hanks now in his mid 30s, decided he needed a change of direction, a move away from the nice guy characters he'd become known for.

I think at that point he was done with all that.

He wanted something to touch people, to touch him.

He wanted to play real people.

(pensive music) ♪ (narrator) After a year-long break, Tom chose for his comeback A League of Their Own, the story of a women's baseball team and their cantankerous male coach.

(Ann) Well, he played Jimmy Dugan, a kind of misogynistic alcoholic, down-on-his-luck baseball manager.

If you really got into that world, it's not really very pretty.

(narrator) It was a chance to be enjoyably mean and Tom's performance won widespread acclaim, helping the movie gross over $100 million.

(contemplative music) It also gave Hanks the confidence to leap into serious drama territory, signing up for the first big Hollywood movie addressing AIDS.

(singer) ♪ There's a mountain on my shoulders ♪ (Helen) Tom Hanks plays a lawyer, a gay man who has AIDS and who is fired because his bosses realize you know, what he's suffering from and what his illness is, and he sues for discrimination.

It was a real shift of gear for Tom Hanks because he had always been seen as a comedy actor, and this one was dead straight, very dramatic.

So it forced people to see him in a new light.

(soft piano music) (narrator) As word spread, the praise for Tom's performance grew, culminating in his second Oscar nomination.

Tom had completely reinvented himself, putting his more zany roles of the '80s behind him, which made his next career choice somewhat surprising.

(Helen) If he had gone straight from Big to Forrest Gump, you might have kind of understood the progression there.

To go from Philadelphia to Forrest Gump feels like a bizarre change.

(uplifting guitar music) The idea that this man with, you know, at best, learning difficulties, is present at key moments throughout, you know, US history for sort of, what, 20-30 year period.

It's not something that anyone saw being as big a hit.

♪ (narrator) South Carolina, 1993.

Filming is about to start on Forrest Gump, but there is a big problem.

No one can work out how this unusual character should speak, and it's up to dialect coach Jessica Drake to figure it out.

♪ I think he was due to arrive, like, two days later, and we were gonna have very, very little time.

♪ So I spoke to Bob, the director, Bob Zemeckis, and said, "You know, what do you want?"

And he said, "Well, I want a big Alabama accent."

(phone ringing) So, I got on the phone and I called Winston Groom, who is the author of the novel upon which the script is based.

So I said, "Do you have anybody you could suggest to me that I might be able to get on the phone and would let me record them?"

And he said, "Oh yeah, I've got my friend Jimbo.

He's--he's one of the people I based the idea for the character on."

(Jimbo) Yeah, she called me and told me that I'd been recommended for her to talk to about, uh, you know, my accent.

She wanted to interview some conversations with me, and I said, "Sure."

And so, uh, after the movie, uh, everybody wanted to make me out to be the real Forrest Gump.

(whimsical music) (narrator) Forrest Gump had a voice, but the movie had a new problem.

♪ (Paulie) I get a call from one of the production people, and they said, "Paulie, you've got to go pick Tom up in a half hour."

(uplifting music) So, I bring him there, I say, "Where are we going?"

He had an address.

♪ A lot of cars there.

They were--he was in there two, three hours.

So he came back out and he was crying even on the way home.

♪ And he told me, he says, "The studio was going to pull the plug on the movie."

I go, "What?"

He said, "We decided, Zemeckis, him, that we would forfeit our fees, that we believed in this movie so much that we would take back end or whatever they did."

(narrator) By ploughing their fees into the movie, Hanks and Director Robert Zemeckis saved Forrest Gump.

Tom's gamble on this unusual and poignant film paid off.

Foregoing his fee in place of a share of turnover earned him a reported $30 million.

There was also the small matter of a second consecutive Oscar, making Tom the most powerful man in Hollywood.

It seemed the world was his oyster, but with his pick of movie roles, what would Tom do next?

38-year-old Tom Hanks had come a long way from his lonely, difficult upbringing.

He was wildly successful, universally loved, and building a happy family life with wife Rita and young son Chet.

But he remained profoundly influenced by his childhood.

(David G.) He spent a lot of time on his own, a lot of time watching TV.

It kind of raised him in a way, as a 10-year-old boy, sitting in the dark, watching space missions at a time when the world was kind of caught up in that kind of stuff.

(Helen) Hanks grew up, you know, idolizing the astronauts, you know, just fascinated with the Space Race and seeing these guys as just the pinnacle of human achievement.

(intense music) (dramatic music) (narrator) With his pick of any role, Hanks chose to become an astronaut.

(Tom) I couldn't wait for that first time I got to put on everything, the gloves and the air conditioning unit and the helmet.

It was--it was a real dream come true.

(narrator) Tom would play Captain Jim Lovell of the near disastrous Apollo 13 mission, and undergo the same experience as his heroes by filming on NASA's own training jet.

(Paulie) The vomit comet, if I remember correct, they would go up, straight up in the air.

They'd have cameramen and everything and the astronauts, and then they wanted it so genuine that when they turned around to come down, they would get maybe a minute or two at a time of weightlessness.

(Buzz) What is actually happening once we start doing this in flight, we're alternating between zero gravity, a simulated zero-gravity condition, and 2 Gs.

(Paulie) But a lot of people threw up.

He liked it, 'cause the first thing I asked him when he came back was, "How was it?"

"Oh," he said, "I was like a little kid," he said.

"I wish we could've did it more."

(narrator) Apollo 13 took off, soaring to the top of the box office, with critics praising Hanks's utterly believable Jim Lovell.

(upbeat music) (Helen) He's on top of the world at the box office with Apollo 13, and it kind of seems like he can do anything, and in particular compared with some of the other comic stars of the 1980s, you know, a lot of them had faded into smaller movies, whereas Tom Hanks had this whole second act.

(applauding) (narrator) With Apollo 13, Tom had fulfilled his childhood fantasy.

Now with three kids of his own and a fourth on the way, he decided to make a film that they might like.

(quirky music) The opportunity came with an offer to voice the first entirely computer-animated feature-length film, Toy Story.

Woody and Buzz just caught people's imagination.

So the Toy Story franchise since then has only gone from strength to strength.

Toy Story 2 is one of the greatest sequels of all time.

I would absolutely put it up there with The Godfather Part II.

Toy Story 3 passed a billion dollars and Toy Story 4 has been even more successful.

(adventurous music) (narrator) This final installment concluded 24 years of groundbreaking animation.

(Doc) Tom flips over the script and he goes, "Is this the last line?"

I mean, the stage got quiet, and Tom was sort of like, "I can't believe this is the last line we're doing for the Toy Story series."

So he did the last line and it was great, and Tom said, "Well, we've got to get a picture!"

And so--so I was in the back, he goes, "Doc, get out here!"

You know, "Bring everybody who's back there."

So, we got this, uh, great shot, and it was from Tom's phone.

♪ (narrator) For the makers of Toy Story, the impact of this trailblazing franchise was profound.

♪ (Doc) We'd have a generation lost without those Toy Story movies.

I really do, 'cause all our kids and grandkids, they watch those things all the time.

♪ (narrator) By 1998, Tom was in the middle of a remarkable golden run.

The last six movies he'd starred in had all grossed over $100 million, and he'd worked with some of the best in the business.

But he'd never worked with Steven Spielberg.

That would change on World War II epic, Saving Private Ryan, when Spielberg saw him as the perfect man for the job.

(dramatic music) Oh, I never even thought about household names.

I don't think ever about household names.

I don't think of Tom Hanks as a household name.

I think as Tom Hanks as one of the best American actors we've got.

(Captain Dale) The first time I ever met Tom was when I was called into the Playtone offices, and told that he and Steven Spielberg were about to do a World War II movie and wanted me to work on it, but when Steven and Tom told me what they had planned, in other words, to restage a portion of the Omaha Beach assault on D-Day, I knew I was in the presence of filmmakers that had the ability to do something like that without a bunch of cheesecake and nonsense.

(narrator) Before filming, Spielberg sent his would-be soldiers on an army boot camp led by military advisor Captain Dale Dye.

Part of my desire was to take the actors and to just completely cut them off from modern life, make them live in holes, uh, make them dig those holes, only eat once a day, wear their bodies out, so that I've got a clean slate, so that I've got a dry sponge, and then I can pour on the knowledge.

And of course it being England, weather turned to absolute crapola and it was miserable out there.

It was cold and it was rainy, and the mud was up to our butts, and I still wanted to continue training.

I insisted on continuing training.

That's what soldiers do, they live through that kind of crap.

Well, a few, and I emphasize that word, a few of the people who were in training really said, "You know, we've had enough.

We don't--we don't need this.

We're actors."

And Tom Hanks stepped right up as Captain Miller and he said to them, he said, 'Gents, we're gonna get one shot at doing the right thing.

I understand you're cold, I understand you're miserable, I understand you're beginning to think you're not really actors, that you're soldiers, but I think-- I think there's a reason we're here doing this, and I think we should focus on that reason, and that reason is it's time to shine some bright light, not only tell a great story, a great dramatic story, but shine some great, long-overdue light on the men and women who made the sacrifice in World War II.

(narrator) Tom's intervention ended the mutiny and underlined his perfect casting as Captain Miller.

(Helen) There's no one in Hollywood who's gonna make you care more about Captain Miller than Tom Hanks.

It's this idea of the ordinary man put in the extraordinary circumstance of storming Omaha Beach.

We look at his performance and say, "Boy, I wonder if I could be that guy.

I wonder if I could step up and do that," and he inspires that wonderment.

(uplifting music) ♪ (tense music) (narrator) Hanks's fascination with real people tested to extremes was about to reach its natural conclusion, with a series of remarkable performances as real-life heroes.

(Captain Phillips) I could see just the terror and the fear in his eyes, and that's basically, I'm sure, what I looked at initially when they entered the bridge with the AK-47s.

♪ (upbeat music) (narrator) Throughout the 1990s, roles in Apollo 13, Toy Story, and Saving Private Ryan established Tom Hanks as a very particular type of American hero.

Lovable, reliable, relatable.

(George) He was America's dad.

We recognized in him the father that we love.

I certainly recognize in Tom my own father, and the ability to be funny, to be passionate, to be loving, to be strict.

(solemn music) (narrator) The boy with a distant father had grown up to be America's dad.

But his memories of childhood loneliness would come in handy for his most demanding role to date in Castaway.

♪ (Helen) It's a very interesting film because it is just him on screen for 95 percent of the running time.

He washes up on an island and that's it for the next several years.

He committed to this role so hard and he really put himself through it to play this as well as he does.

(Nigel) The island we shot on for the desert island was literally a desert island.

There was no running water on it.

I felt the heat a lot, and so did Tom.

He remarked one day about the toilet arrangements to me, and said he went to the same hole in the ground as I did, so, uh, that was reassuring.

He wasn't getting any Hollywood treatment, and we were all in it together.

(dramatic music) You have to be invested in his survival and you have to be able to know what he's thinking, why he's doing what he's doing, and somehow he makes you care desperately about Wilson as well as himself.

I mean, that is astonishing, but genuinely one of the most emotional moments in the film is when Wilson is lost at sea, and we're desperately worried for the fate of a completely inanimate volleyball.

Who else could do that?

I really don't know.

(Bert) I watched that movie in awe, and I asked him about Castaway.

He's a very humble guy, he goes, "Well, you know, there are 100 other people around, and there was crew and there were directors.

I said, "You held the screen for 45 minutes.

What an achieve--what an acting achievement that was."

(atmospheric music) (narrator) By the early 2000s, Tom was on an unprecedented decade-long golden run.

♪ 11 commercial and critical hits in a row, with Tom increasingly specializing in everyday heroes.

♪ And as he entered his 50s, Tom has found himself drawn ever more frequently to one particular type of role.

♪ (Helen) As he's gotten older, Tom Hanks has played more and more kind of real life figures, because there's only so far you can go maybe in the average movie script, and this gives him something much more, you know, real to draw on.

(Bert) In many cases, it allows him to meet these people.

That probably just feeds off his desire to know more about people, and who people are, and what makes them special, and what makes them courageous or--or talented or brilliant.

(dramatic music) (narrator) One of Hanks's finest real life roles would re-tell the story of pirates hijacking a cargo ship captained by Richard Phillips.

♪ The first time that I had met Tom, he was supposed to come up to my house right here where we are now, and he's a little bit of a time thief.

He was a little late and I was getting into this basketball game.

Well, when he finally got-- came to the door, he was about a half hour late, he comes to the door and says, "Hi, I'm Tom Hanks," and I just said, "Hey, I'll be with you in a few minutes.

The game's got three more minutes to go."

So, after the basketball game, we just talked.

I don't know what he was doing when he was here, but I was talking with a friend just a little while ago, and she told me, "Oh, he was picking up your mannerisms and his accent."

You know, because she would say, "Oh yeah, you push your glasses up a lot and he did that in the movie."

I said, "Wow, I never noticed that."

(intense music) (narrator) Hanks's dedication to realism was matched by Director Paul Greengrass.

♪ He took the decision to cast complete newcomers to play the film's Somali pirates.

(Barkhad Abdi) For Captain Phillips, I honestly did not have any acting experience.

(Barkhad Abdirahman) I didn't have no experience, I mean, I never acted before.

So yeah, it was my first time.

(narrator) Greengrass then insisted that the actors had no contact with the film star until their fateful meeting on the ship's bridge.

(Barkhad Abdi) He said you guys are nice and he's nice, so if you guys meet each other, then-- (Barkhad Abdirahman) The chemistry's going to rub off, you know.

(dramatic music) (Barkhad Abdi) It wasn't a great feeling, you know, the first time we meet Tom Hanks, and we're pointing a gun at him, and-- -Yeah, yeah, in his face.

-Yelling at him in a language he can't understand.

(Barkhad Abdirahman) It was chaotic, to be honest.

(Captain Phillips) I could see just the terror and the fear in his eyes, but I also could see through his eyes.

You can almost see the smoke, thinking in the back of his mind, trying to figure out ways to get out of that, and that's basically, I'm sure, what I looked at initially when they entered the bridge with the AK-47s.

(Barkhad Abdirahman) Just makes it so easy.

He's been doing it for a long time, so it just takes the pressure off.

So he's just a nice guy, you know, he'll talk to you, down-to-earth person, so that makes it easy for us.

♪ (quirky music) ♪ (narrator) Since 2002, Tom Hanks has starred in nine films in which he plays real-life characters.

Whether it's a drug-taking politician or an understated airline pilot, Tom has brought an inner decency to them all.

But no part was quite as saintly as that of revered US children's TV host, Mr. Rogers, who Hanks would play in 2019.

(Helen) We didn't really get a lot of Mr. Rogers shows over here.

He's not really a part of the British psyche, but in the US he was enormous.

♪ Tom Hanks looks nothing like Mr. Rogers.

He just has that same sense of kind of calm and groundedness and goodness.

For some people, he's the father figure they never had.

For others, he's a kind of trusted friend or, you know, advisor, and his characters on screen really do occupy a similar place to Mr. Rogers.

(narrator) Mr. Rogers is ultimately revealed to be as saintly as he seems, but does the same hold true for Tom?

(Holly) He's kind, you know, and you hear those things and--and everybody's like, "Well, yeah, but is there something else?"

And there isn't, he's just-- he's one of the most genuinely kind human beings I've ever met.

He real--he is.

(Ann) Our industry is not always very nice.

It can be very ruthless and it can be very cruel.

He's chosen to stay a decent person and somebody who's available and gracious.

♪ (Helen) He's just such a warm-hearted, fun, interesting guy.

Who doesn't like Tom Hanks?

(contemplative music) ♪ (narrator) Yet for all Tom's popularity and success, recent years have not been without challenges.

♪ (David G.) Everyone says, "Oh, nice guy," and he absolutely is.

Even being the world's biggest movie star, it's not necessarily easy.

Age brings with it other challenges.

A few years ago now, Rita was diagnosed with breast cancer, something where it drew his family together and she spoke about how much she relied on him, how important he was to her recovery.

♪ (narrator) Thankfully, after treatment, Rita regained her health, but in 2020, whilst filming in Australia, the couple were amongst the first famous names to be struck down by a strange new illness.

(George) He opened a door for us in many ways, they both did without knowing.

♪ Because it showed if Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson can get COVID, oh, my God, anybody can get COVID.

(pleasant music) ♪ (narrator) What happens to Hanks is headline news, yet this global superstar is not too big to regularly catch up with his old theater friends.

(Bert) I mean, we're all older.

Many of us have had the experience of having children.

Many of us have had the experience now of losing patents, losing friends.

You know, so we have life's experience, but the same sense of friendship is still there.

(Mary) I got a letter from Tom, and it was beautiful, beautiful long letter.

He said that-- that what that brought him, that reunion, while we were carrying the burden of our lost youths, it brought him at age 60 a gift of connection.

And so that word is a part of the vocabulary that makes up Tom.

♪ (narrator) And Tom has not just connected with friends and family.

Through his performances, he's connected with the world.

(uplifting music) He's made some of the greatest films of the last 30 years.

So I think he's left a legacy of work that is kind of unparalleled.

♪ (Bert) You look at the great actors over the years.

There is a pattern of what they did to further their careers, to take risk, to try something different, to say, "To hell with what people think, I'm doing this."

♪ (George) He's every man, he is us in no matter what he does.

He represents all of us.

So his success is the surprises that he continues to bring to us on the screen simply by being who he is.

(narrator) Now in his mid 60s, Tom has no plans to stop.

(overlapping remarks) (Mary and Holly) Do we think Tom will retire?

I don't think so.

(chuckling) (quirky music) (Doc) I think he has-- he has too many roles ahead of him to do, and he'll go--knowing Tom, he'll go till he's 100.

♪ (Bert) You've not seen the last of Tom Hanks, I assure you of that.

(triumphant music) ♪ (bright music)