Tom Hanks Cast Away (2000)

Tom Hanks (born July 9, 1956, Concord, California) starred as Chuck Noland in Cast Away (2000). He also produced the film through his company Playtone, originated the premise, and brought screenwriter William Broyles Jr and director Robert Zemeckis onto the project. Cast Away was Hanks's fifth Academy Award nomination and the most physically demanding role of his career.

Cast Away started with a question Hanks asked himself about a FedEx article

By the late 1990s, Hanks was the most reliable adult-drama lead in Hollywood — Philadelphia (1993) and Forrest Gump (1994) had won him back-to-back Best Actor Oscars, and Saving Private Ryan (1998) had cemented the everyman gravitas. The Cast Away premise came from a magazine article about FedEx logistics.

"I was reading an article about FedEx, and I realized that 747s filled with packages fly across the Pacific three times a day. And I just thought, 'What happens if that goes down?'" — Tom Hanks, CinemaBlend (2020)

Hanks brought the idea to Broyles, a Vietnam veteran and Apollo 13 screenwriter. Broyles flew to the Sea of Cortez and stranded himself on a beach to write the survival sequences. Hanks then gave the script to Zemeckis, who directed Forrest Gump. The film took six years to develop. (wikipedia)

The physical commitment was unprecedented in Hanks's career

For pre-crash Chuck, Hanks deliberately gained weight to play a comfortable corporate traveler. Production then shut down for a year so he could lose roughly fifty-five pounds, grow out his hair and beard, and age into the marooned Chuck of the second act. He committed to a near-monotonous diet — fish and vegetables — and cardio. The transformation took twelve months.

"It was a burden. And it was a burden because I knew when the time came there wasn't going to be anyone else to work off of." — Tom Hanks, SlashFilm (2020)

"I was tired all the time. I was cold. And I was angry for no reason." — Tom Hanks, SlashFilm (2020)

Hanks gave up almost everything except coffee. He later acknowledged that the dramatic weight cycling — first up for the early scenes, then down for the island sequences — likely contributed to the type 2 diabetes he was diagnosed with in 2013. After the diagnosis he said publicly he would not do that kind of physical transformation again. (SlashFilm, wikipedia)

A staph infection during the Fiji shoot nearly killed him

Already weakened by the low-calorie diet, Hanks cut his leg while filming on Monuriki. The cut became infected. The infection began eating through the tissue of his leg. Production was suspended for three weeks while he was hospitalized.

"It put me in the hospital. I was there for three days with something that, believe it or not, almost killed me. I got an infection from a cut, and it was eating its way through my leg." — Tom Hanks, FandomWire (2022)

Doctors warned of blood poisoning that could be fatal. He recovered and finished the picture.

The performance was about loneliness, not survival

Hanks has described the film, in retrospect, as less about physical survival than about the slower kind of isolation that does not end with rescue.

"Once Chuck has figured out how to stay alive, his battle is no longer against the elements, it's about desperation." — Tom Hanks, Rotten Tomatoes (2020)

"It's about loneliness that is very different from being home on a Saturday night with nothing to do." — Tom Hanks, ABC News (2006)

He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor — his fifth nomination — and won the Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Drama. He lost the Oscar to Russell Crowe for Gladiator.

Selected filmography

Year	Film	Notes
1984	Splash	Breakthrough
1988	Big	First Oscar nomination
1992	A League of Their Own
1993	Philadelphia	First Best Actor Oscar
1994	Forrest Gump	Second Best Actor Oscar; first Zemeckis film
1995	Apollo 13	First Broyles screenplay
1998	Saving Private Ryan	Fourth Oscar nomination
1999	The Green Mile
2000	Cast Away	Fifth Oscar nomination, Golden Globe win
2002	Road to Perdition / Catch Me If You Can
2004	The Polar Express / The Terminal	Mocap with Zemeckis
2013	Captain Phillips
2017	The Post
2024	Here	Reunion with Zemeckis