Tom Hanks Teases Only Four of His Movies Are "Pretty Good"

By Nicole Drum

With a career spanning more than 40 years, Tom Hanks has made a lot of movies and has even won a couple of Best Actor Academy Awards for roles in two of them as well as garnered multiple nominations for other roles cover a wide range of genres, but to hear Hanks tell it, he's only made four "pretty good" films. Speaking with People in support of his first novel, The Making of Another Major Motion Picture Masterpiece which is out next year, Hanks spoke a bit about how even though he's been part of the film industry for years, even he is amazed at how films come together — and revealed that he thinks the good ones that he has made is pretty low in number.

"No one knows how a movie is made — though everyone thinks they do," Hanks said. "And I've made a ton of movies (and four of them are pretty good, I think) and I'm still amazed at how films come together. From a flicker of an idea to the flickering image onscreen, the whole process is a miracle."

Hanks doesn't elaborate on what four films he puts on that short "pretty good" list and given the actor's body of work, it's certainly going to be the source of some debate among fans. Some of Hanks' best-known films include Forrest Gump, Saving Private Ryan, Apollo 13, Philadelphia, Sleepless in Seattle, and many, many more. More recently, he starred as Colonel Tom Parker in Baz Luhrmann's Elvis. If any of those films are on Hanks' list is anyone's guess.

As for the actor's novel, The Making of Another Major Motion Masterpiece is set to be released on May 9, 2023. The novel, which is described as being about the making of a "colossal, star-studded multimillion-dollar superhero action film and the humble comic book that inspired it", is said to span several decades of American culture, with part seeing a young boy left with a lasting impression from his uncle returning home from World War II who grows up to draw comic books, making said uncle a central character while, in the present day, a director adapts the comic book into a big budget film and encounters various challenges along the way.

"The source for a movie can go back as may years as are in history," Hanks said. "A story turns on a single moment in the life of someone, then all the anecdotes of the current day magnify that moment. Going back to 1947 makes sense, as would have starting in, say, 1559. Human yearning has proven to be timeless."

What do you think about Hanks' comments? Which four of his movies do you think are "pretty good"? Let us know your thoughts in the comment section!

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