7 of the best...
1BIG (1989)
HIT comedy about a boy who wakes to find himself in the body of an adult after making a wish at a fairground. One of the movie’s memorable scenes sees Tom taking part in a keyboard dance sequence with actor Robert Loggia. He later said:
“It was like jumping rope for three and half hours every time we did the scene. It was really hard work.”
2PHILADELPHIA (1993)
TOM thinned in his hair and lost more than 30lbs to play a gay lawyer with HIV who sues his firm for discrimination. His powerful performance as Andrew Beckett won him an Oscar and his friend Bruce Springsteen also took home an Oscar for best song for the title track. Denzel Washington played the lawyer who overcomes his own prejudice while representing Beckett in court.
3FORREST
GUMP
(1994)
HE won his second Oscar with this feel-good movie about a simple man who often finds himself at important moments in history. Tom’s daughter Elizabeth appears as the girl who refuses to let the young Forrest sit next to her on the school bus. Tom has said: “My work is more fun than fun, but best of all, it’s still scary. You are always walking some kind of high wire.”
4TOY
STORY (1995)
THIS bona-fide classic has delighted generations of children. Tom is the voice of beloved cowboy toy Woody who feels overshadowed by action figure Buzz Lightyear (Tim Allen). Tom recorded his parts during breaks in the filming of Sleepless
In Seattle.
5SAVING
PRIVATE RYAN (1998)
ONE of five films he has made with director Steven Spielberg – the last was Bridge Of Spies in 2015. Saving Private Ryan saw him playing Captain Miller whose squad is tasked with finding and bringing home a paratrooper behind enemy lines in the wake of D-Day. Miller says: “He better be worth it. He better go home and cure a disease, or invent a longer-lasting light bulb.”
6THE
GREEN MILE (1999)
THIS adaptation of the popular Stephen King story saw Tom play death row guard Paul Edgecomb, a role he had said fitted “like an old shoe”. The story of a condemned man with mystical healing powers was originally published in 100 page instalments in the late 1990s. Stephen King also visited the set during filming and even sat in the electric chair called Old Sparky.
7CAST
AWAY (2001)
THE star had to put on and then lose weight for his role as a busy FedEx employee who ends up alone on an isolated island after surviving a plane crash. He was given a year to grow his hair and shed the pounds for his final scenes in the movie. Tom said he drank a lot of coffee every morning and refrained from eating French fries to prepare for the role.