Oscar-winning actor stars as Elvis Presley’s longtime manager Colonel Tom Parker
tom hank is a rare brand of celebritybasically universally loved by everyone and praised for his performances in movies like Saving Private Ryan, Captain Phillips, Philadelphia, Cast Away, Forrest Gump and Apollo 13, Just to name a few.
He will make his next big-screen appearance in the Baz Luhrmann-directed Elvis Presley biopic, which is set to hit UK cinemas later this month.
Who plays Tom Hanks in Elvis?
Hanks stars in the new Elvis Presley biopic, simply titled Elvisas Colonel Tom Parker, who was Preseley’s infamous longtime manager who launched his career.
Parker discovered Presley in 1955 and the two worked together until the singer’s death in 1977. Parker himself died in 1997 at age 87.
During the Elvis panel at the Cannes Film Festival in late May, Hanks opened up about the divisive role and why he chose to portray such an unlikable character.
He said: “I’m not interested in playing a villain just for the sake of, ‘Before I kill you, Mr Bond, you might like a tour of my facilities.’ It’s okay, I understand, but it’s for other things.
Hanks added, “There would have been no Elvis without Colonel Tom Parker; there would have been no Colonel Tom Parker without Elvis. A symbiotic relationship.
“What [Luhrmann] wowed me with was, here is a guy who saw an opportunity to manifest a once-in-a-lifetime talent into a cultural force.
Hanks said Luhrmann described Parker as a “big carney”, or carnival worker.
He said: ‘Carney’s job is to bring people to the twinkling lights out of town, promise them something they’ve never experienced before, and then almost give it to them, to a price.
“When he said that, I said, ‘I’m your man’.”
Elvis is set to hit UK cinemas on June 24 and stars Austin Butler (The Shannara Chronicles, Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood), Olivia De Jonge (The staircaseThe society) and Dacre Montgomery (stranger thingsThe gallery of broken hearts) alongside Hanks.
When was he seen shaking – how is his health?
Fans of the actor have expressed concerns for his health due to a clip that has gone viral that shows his hands shaking.
The footage, which was recorded on June 4, was captured during Australia’s premier of Elvis, and showed Hanks on stage as he seemed to struggle to keep a steady microphone. In the clip, he can be seen moving the mic back and forth and, on several occasions, attempting to hold it with both hands.
Hanks did not speak about his shaking hands while filming the clip and did not offer a statement after the video was released online.
While some have speculated that the actor may just be suffering from nerves, others have speculated that his shaky hands may have been caused by his diabetes, a diagnosis he shared in 2013.
At the time, Hanks appeared on the Late show with David Letterman and said, “I went to the doctor and he was like, ‘You know those high blood sugar numbers you’ve been dealing with since you were 36? Well, you graduated! You have type 2 diabetes, young man.”
In March 2020, Hanks also struggled to recover from Covid-19 after contracting the virus alongside his wife, Rita Wilson, while the couple were in Australia.
Chat with the Guardian in July that year, Hanks said, “I just had crippling body aches, was very tired all the time, and couldn’t concentrate on anything for more than about 12 minutes.”
How old is Tom Hanks?
Hanks is 65 years old. He was born on July 9, 1956 in Concord, California.
His wife, Rita Wilson, is also 65. The two met in 1981 on the set of the TV show bosom buddies and met again a few years later in 1985 on the set of Volunteers.
The two married in 1988 and have two sons together – eldest son Chester “Chest” Marlon, born in 1990, and youngest son Truman Theodore born in 1995.
