The “fucked-up” 1992 role that saved Tom Hanks’ career: ” A big ding went off in my head”There’s only so long an actor can keep doing the same things until the novelty wears off, and it took Tom Hanks roughly a decade to reach that point, which is still a pretty long time, all things considered. The drawback is that because Hanks was such a gifted comic actor, most of the roles he was offered were in comedies. He’d fucked up his career. Apollo 13 was coming up, and I was worried that Ron Howard wouldn’t see me as a guy in charge of a spacecraft flying to the Moon. Before he reached Howard’s biographical drama, he still had a few pictures to get through, and they changed everything.