Tom Hanks turns 70 on July 9, marking five decades since his career began, including back-to-back Oscars for Philadelphia and Forrest Gump in 1993 and 1994. He remains the last actor to win the award in consecutive years, and at 70 he says retirement isn’t on the table.
Seventy years old and not a wrinkle on that filmography. The man who once played a shipwrecked FedEx employee talking to a volleyball has spent five decades becoming something close to America’s default good guy on screen. Two Oscars in a row, a box office haul north of 7.8 billion dollars, and a voice that generations of kids know better than their own uncle’s, thanks to a certain cowboy toy. Tom Hanks built all of it starting from a theater stage in California, long before anyone could have guessed where it would lead.
A milestone birthday for a Hollywood icon
On July 9, 2026, Tom Hanks turns 70. Over the past 5 decades, he has built one of the most consistent careers in American cinema, moving from broad comedies to prestige dramas with rare ease. Few actors have earned the same level of critical respect and audience affection at once, and even fewer have sustained it this long.
From California stages to a breakout mermaid comedy
Born on July 9, 1956, in Concord, California, Hanks is a distant relative of Abraham Lincoln, though politics never tempted him. Theater did. He performed in school productions as a teenager, made his professional stage debut in 1977, and won an award in 1978 for playing Proteus in a Shakespeare adaptation. He moved to New York in 1979 and landed a small part in the horror film “He Knows You’re Alone.” His real break arrived in 1984 with Splash, the romantic comedy that turned him into a bankable comedic lead and opened the door to “Big” and “Sleepless in Seattle.”
Back-to-back Oscars and a box office empire
Everything shifted in 1993 with “Philadelphia,” where his portrayal of a lawyer battling AIDS earned him his first Academy Award. A year later, Forrest Gump brought him a second. He remains, to this day, the last actor to win 2 consecutive Oscars. Nominations followed for “Saving Private Ryan,” “Cast Away” and “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood,” while hits like “Catch Me If You Can” and “Elvis” kept his commercial streak alive.
His biggest earner, though, is a voice role: Woody in the “Toy Story” saga. His career box office total currently stands at $7.89 billion, and with “Toy Story 5,” which opened exclusively in U.S. theaters on June 19, 2026, performing well, the $8 billion mark is within reach.
Slowing down, not retiring
Hanks has eased his pace lately. His most recent big-screen appearance was a supporting role in Wes Anderson’s “The Phoenician Scheme” in 2025, but retirement is off the table. A sequel to Greyhound is now in development at Apple Studios, and he will reunite with director Marielle Heller, his collaborator on “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood,” for a still-mysterious project. He has also made clear he wants no remakes of his classic films.
The favorite film you might not expect
Asked to name the highlight of his own filmography, Hanks skips the Oscar winners entirely. His pick is Cloud Atlas, the ambitious 2012 sci-fi epic that underperformed in theaters. He has described the shoot, largely filmed in Germany, as one of the most intense and rewarding experiences of his career, made “with a hope, a dream and nothing but a circle of love.”