Actor. Born on July 9, 1956, in Concord, California, educated at California State University. Highly talented, boyishly charming comedy star of the American screen. His parents having divorced when he was five, he was raised by his father, an itinerant cook, who moved about northern California before settling in Oakland. He began acting in high school, then majored in drama at college. Invited to join the Great Lakes Shakespeare Festival, near Cleveland, he played roles of the classic repertoire for three summer seasons, before heading to New York, where he continued playing the classics with the Riverside Theater company. His first national exposure came in the TV comedy series "Bosom Buddies" (1980-1982), a twist on Some Like It Hot featuring two men who must pretend to be women in order to live in all-female housing. Following an unmemorable screen debut in a horror movie, Hanks soared to sudden stardom with his second film, the comedy box-office hit Splash (1984). His appealing personality and natural ease and comic precision combined to accelerate his popularity in the coming years. He scored a huge hit in Big (1988), gaining an Academy Award nomination for his disarming portrayal of a boy trapped in a man's body. After a succession of flops, he regained momentum with his performance as a burned-out ex-ballplayer coaching an all-female baseball team in A League of Their Own (1992), and with the romantic comedy Sleepless in Seattle (1993). His most challenging dramatic role came in 1993 in Philadelphia, playing a gay lawyer dying of AIDS in the early 80's. He won the Best Actor Academy Award for the portrayal. Divorced from actress-producer Samantha Lewes, Hanks married actress Rita Wilson in 1988.
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