One of the most celebrated collaborations on film is that of director Steven Spielberg and actor Tom Hanks. The duo have worked on five films together and have even jointly produced the miniseries Band of Brothers as well as its companion piece, The Pacific.
After working with each other for over twenty years and being friends for even longer, the pair have had many chances to collaborate on even more projects. Director Steven Spielberg revealed in an interview that the director regrets not taking up the offer to direct Philadelphia, a film which one Tom Hanks his first Oscar for Best Actor.
The Films Of Steven Spielberg And Tom Hanks
While they have been in the business since the 1970s, Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg only worked together for the first time in 1998’s Saving Private Ryan. Before that, the duo were friends who lived in the same part of town and were enthusiastic about history. The duo have mostly made films that were in some way or the other connected to the history of the world.
After Saving Private Ryan, the duo collaborated again on Catch Me If You Can. The film starred Leonardo DiCaprio as real-life con man Frank Abignale Jr. and Tom Hanks as CBI agent Carl Hanratty. The film saw the year-long cat-and-mouse chase between Hanratty and Frank as the latter runs around America conning people as a Pan-American pilot and a doctor.
Spielberg and Hanks collaborated again on The Terminal, which was about a man who gets stuck in JFK airport as he is denied entry into the USA. He is unable to go back to his own country as there is a military coup. The story was based on Mehran Karimi Nasseri, who lived at the terminal at Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris, for eighteen years.
After over a decade, the duo came back together with two back-to-back films. The first was the espionage drama Bridge of Spies, which was based on a real incident that occurred during the Cold War. Hanks portrayed lawyer James Donovan, who is tasked with negotiating the release of Francis Gary Powers, a CIA pilot with the Soviet Union. The two returned next year with The Post, which centered on the publication of the Pentagon Papers in the Washington Post.
Which Film Does Steven Spielberg Regret Rejecting?
While promoting their last film The Post, which also starred Meryl Streep, the pair gave an interview to Time magazine. They were asked which was the one film of the other that they wished they were a part of. While Tom Hanks recounted his memory of wanting to be in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Steven Spielberg immediately mentioned Philadelphia.
Spielberg mentioned that he was working on Schindler’s List at the same time Tom Hanks was working on Philadelphia and he would see Hanks in his look for the role, bald with a baseball cap on. He said,
“I knew the story, but hadn’t read the script…For me, the proof in knowing someone very very well, and not knowing someone at all but knowing his character very well, is when I went to see Philadelphia and forgot that I even knew this man…that was one of the most shattering experiences I’ve had seeing a movie when I knew the actor and then discovered that I didn’t know the character. The knowing of the actor didn’t knock down the fourth wall.”
Philadelphia was one of the first mainstream films to portray homosexuality and HIV in a positive light. The film follows the story of a lawyer, who sues his first after they unjustly fire him from his job due to his AIDS diagnosis. The film was groundbreaking upon release and even earned Tom Hanks his first Academy Award for Best Actor. He won the award again for his role in Forrest Gump. Steven Spielberg also won his first Academy Award for Best Director that year for Schindler’s List.
Source: Time
