Tom Hanks Movies Ranked: The 10 Best, From Big to Saving Private Ryan

Few actors have built a career as dependable as Tom Hanks. Over more than four decades he has moved from broad 1980s comedies to wartime epics, true stories and animated classics, picking up back-to-back Academy Awards for Best Actor along the way. These Tom Hanks movies ranked from tenth to first cover the full spread of that work, from a boy who wakes up as an adult to a weary army captain searching for one soldier in occupied France.

The order is driven by the performance first and the film second. A role ranks higher when Hanks carries the story, takes a risk or reveals something new about the Hanks career, and lower when the film succeeds mainly on the strength of an ensemble, a director or a team of animators. Every pick below is a movie worth seeing, so the ranking is really an argument about where he did his finest acting.

Tom Hanks Movies Ranked by Role and Director

#	Movie	Year	Role	Director
1	Saving Private Ryan	1998	Captain Miller	Steven Spielberg
2	Forrest Gump	1994	Forrest Gump	Robert Zemeckis
3	Cast Away	2000	Chuck Noland	Robert Zemeckis
4	Philadelphia	1993	Andrew Beckett	Jonathan Demme
5	Toy Story	1995	Woody (voice)	John Lasseter
6	Catch Me If You Can	2002	Carl Hanratty	Steven Spielberg
7	Apollo 13	1995	Jim Lovell	Ron Howard
8	Big	1988	Josh	Penny Marshall
9	Captain Phillips	2013	Captain Richard Phillips	Paul Greengrass
10	The Green Mile	1999	Paul Edgecomb	Frank Darabont

10. The Green Mile (1999)

Frank Darabont adapted Stephen King's novel The Green Mile into a long, patient prison drama set on death row in 1930s Louisiana. Hanks plays Paul Edgecomb, the decent supervisor of the cell block, whose life changes when John Coffey, a gentle giant convicted of murdering two young girls, arrives under his watch. Michael Clarke Duncan plays Coffey, a man who appears to have miraculous healing powers, while David Morse plays Brutus Howell, Paul's trusted deputy, and Bonnie Hunt plays Paul's wife, Jan.

Edgecomb is a reactive role, the steady witness to other people's suffering and wonder, and Hanks plays it with patience and moral weight. He lets Duncan and the rest of the ensemble take the big moments while he anchors the film's conscience, especially once Paul begins to doubt Coffey's guilt. The three-hour running time tests some viewers, and the part asks less of Hanks than the films ranked above it, which is why it rounds out the top ten rather than climbing higher.

9. Captain Phillips (2013)

Paul Greengrass directs Captain Phillips, the true story of the 2009 hijacking of the cargo ship Maersk Alabama by Somali pirates off the Horn of Africa. Hanks plays Captain Richard Phillips, a careful, by-the-book merchant mariner who is eventually taken hostage aboard a cramped lifeboat. Barkhad Abdi plays Muse, the gaunt and desperate leader of the pirates, with Barkhad Abdirahman and Faysal Ahmed as members of his crew. Greengrass shoots it all in his urgent handheld style, keeping the tension close and claustrophobic.

For most of the running time Hanks plays Phillips as competent and contained, which is exactly why the final scene is so overwhelming. After his rescue, Phillips sits in a ship's medical bay in shock, unable to answer simple questions, and Hanks breaks down with a rawness he rarely shows on screen. That closing stretch is among the best acting of his later career. It sits ninth only because the film around it is a tight thriller rather than a full character study.

8. Big (1988)

Penny Marshall's Big begins with a boy named Josh Baskin who makes a wish at a fortune-telling machine at a carnival and wakes up the next morning in the body of a grown man. Hanks plays the adult Josh, who has to find an apartment and a job in New York while his best friend hunts for a way to reverse the wish. Robert Loggia plays MacMillan, the toy company boss charmed by Josh's instincts, and Elizabeth Perkins plays Susan, a colleague who falls for him.

The famous duet on a giant floor piano in a toy store captures why this works: Hanks never plays Josh as an adult pretending to be a child, but as a child genuinely stranded inside a strange new body. The comedy is physical and sincere, and the bittersweet romance never turns cynical because his innocence is so clear. The role won him a Golden Globe and brought his first Academy Award nomination, at the 1989 ceremony, the moment he graduated from comic lead to serious actor.

7. Apollo 13 (1995)

Ron Howard's Apollo 13 recreates the 1970 lunar mission that became a fight for survival after an oxygen tank exploded on the way to the Moon. Hanks plays commander Jim Lovell, who watches his dream of walking on the lunar surface disappear within minutes. Bill Paxton and Kevin Bacon play crewmates Fred Haise and Jack Swigert, crammed together in a freezing spacecraft, while Gary Sinise plays Ken Mattingly, the astronaut grounded before launch who works from the ground to help bring them home.

Lovell is a leader under pressure, and Hanks plays him with calm authority rather than heroics, keeping the crew focused while tempers fray and the air runs short. The film is an ensemble machine, with as much drama in Mission Control as in the capsule, which is why it sits seventh rather than higher. Still, it is the clearest early example of Hanks playing a real American figure, a type of role that later came to define his work, from Captain Phillips to Fred Rogers.

6. Catch Me If You Can (2002)

Steven Spielberg's Catch Me If You Can follows a teenage con artist, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, who passes himself off as an airline pilot, a doctor and a lawyer in the 1960s while cashing forged checks. Hanks plays Carl Hanratty, the dogged FBI agent who spends years chasing him across the country and overseas. Christopher Walken plays the young forger's father, a charming failure whose example shapes the boy, and Martin Sheen appears as Roger Strong, the father of the con man's fiancée.

Hanks takes the supporting lane here and clearly enjoys it. Hanratty is humorless, stiff and a little lonely, with a flat Boston accent and no gift for small talk, and Hanks finds unexpected comedy in his sheer persistence. The phone calls between agent and fugitive slowly turn into something close to friendship, and that shift gives the film its heart. It ranks sixth because the spotlight rightly belongs to DiCaprio, yet Hanks makes the pursuer every bit as memorable as the pursued.

5. Toy Story (1995)

Toy Story gave Hanks the voice role of Woody, a pull-string cowboy doll who leads the toys in a boy named Andy's bedroom. His comfortable status collapses when Andy receives Buzz Lightyear, a space ranger action figure voiced by Tim Allen who has no idea he is a toy. John Lasseter directs the first feature film made entirely with computer animation, and Don Rickles and Jim Varney add wonderful comic texture as the sarcastic Mr. Potato Head and the loyal Slinky Dog.

Voice work is easy to undervalue in a ranking like this, but Woody may be the most complete comic character Hanks has ever played. He is jealous, bossy and petty, then brave and loyal, and Hanks makes every shift audible without losing an ounce of warmth. The role also gave him a second screen life that carried on through the sequels, including Toy Story 3. It lands mid-table because the performance is superb but the film's success belongs to an entire team of animators and writers.

4. Philadelphia (1993)

Jonathan Demme's Philadelphia casts Hanks as Andrew Beckett, a rising associate at a prestigious law firm who is fired soon after the partners notice signs of his illness with AIDS. Determined to prove the dismissal was discrimination, he hires Joe Miller, a personal injury lawyer played by Denzel Washington, who has to confront his own prejudice to take the case. Jason Robards plays Charles Wheeler, the senior partner who turns against Beckett, and Mary Steenburgen plays the attorney defending the firm.

This was the role that changed how Hollywood saw Hanks. Beckett grows weaker as the trial goes on, and Hanks charts the decline with precision while keeping the man's wit and dignity intact, most memorably in a late-night scene where he walks Miller through an opera aria. It won him his first Academy Award for Best Actor, at the 1994 ceremony, plus a Golden Globe, and it remains one of the strongest courtroom dramas built around a lawyer of its decade.

3. Cast Away (2000)

In Cast Away, Hanks plays Chuck Noland, a FedEx systems engineer who lives by the clock and measures his days in minutes. When a cargo plane goes down over the Pacific, he washes up alone on an uninhabited island and has to learn fire, shelter and food from scratch. Robert Zemeckis directs, reuniting with Hanks after Forrest Gump, and Helen Hunt plays Kelly Frears, the girlfriend Chuck had promised to marry. Nick Searcy appears as his friend Stan in the scenes set back home.

For long stretches Hanks has no one to act against except a volleyball he names Wilson, and he makes that relationship genuinely moving. The film depends entirely on his physical and emotional presence, and the contrast between the soft, busy Chuck of the opening and the gaunt survivor years later is startling. The role earned a Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Drama and an Oscar nomination at the 2001 ceremony. Only a tidier, quieter final act keeps it out of the top two.

2. Forrest Gump (1994)

Robert Zemeckis built Forrest Gump around a gentle Alabama man with a low IQ and an unshakable sense of decency, and Hanks carries him from his late teens into middle age. Sitting on a bus stop bench, Forrest recounts how he stumbled through college football, the Vietnam War, a ping-pong tour of China and a shrimping business. Robin Wright plays Jenny, the troubled childhood friend he never stops loving, Gary Sinise plays the embittered Lieutenant Dan, and Sally Field plays his fiercely protective mother.

Second place reflects how hard this role is to play without condescension. Hanks commits completely to Forrest's slow, literal way of speaking yet never winks at the audience, so the comedy grows out of character and the sadness lands with real weight. The performance won him a second consecutive Academy Award for Best Actor, at the 1995 ceremony, along with a Golden Globe. It sits just behind Saving Private Ryan only because the war film asks him to do more with less.

1. Saving Private Ryan (1998)

Saving Private Ryan opens on Omaha Beach in June 1944 and never fully lets the audience breathe again. Steven Spielberg follows Captain John Miller, played by Hanks, as he leads a small squad inland to find a single paratrooper whose brothers have all been killed in action, so the army can send him home. Tom Sizemore plays Sergeant Horvath, Miller's steady right hand, while Edward Burns and Barry Pepper fill out a unit that openly questions why so many men should risk their lives for one.

The film earns the top spot because Hanks plays its hero as a tired, ordinary man rather than a born soldier. Miller's hand trembles, his men run a betting pool on what he did before the war, and his authority rests on quiet competence instead of speeches. That restraint is what makes the final act so devastating. The performance brought Hanks a Best Actor nomination at the 1999 Academy Awards, and it began a partnership with Spielberg that shaped much of the second half of his career.

Honorable Mentions: More Tom Hanks Movies Worth Watching

A filmography this deep leaves plenty of strong work outside the top ten. These are the performances that came closest, spread across every stage of his career.

• Splash (1984): Hanks plays Allen Bauer, a New York produce businessman who falls for a mermaid, in the romantic comedy that turned him into a leading man.
• You've Got Mail (1998): As Joe Fox, heir to a chain of book superstores, he trades anonymous emails with the owner of the small bookshop his company is driving out of business.
• The Terminal (2004): His third film with Spielberg casts him as Viktor Navorski, a traveler stranded inside a New York airport after his home country collapses into a coup.
• Charlie Wilson's War (2007): He plays the Texas congressman who helped steer secret funding to Afghan fighters resisting the Soviet invasion.
• News of the World (2020): Reuniting with Paul Greengrass, he plays Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd, a Civil War veteran who reads the news aloud in frontier towns and agrees to return a young girl to her relatives.
• Elvis (2022): A rare villainous turn as Colonel Tom Parker, the controlling manager of Elvis Presley.

How the Tom Hanks Career Unfolded, Decade by Decade

Hanks spent the 1980s as one of Hollywood's most reliable comic leads. Bachelor Party, Splash, The Money Pit, Dragnet, The 'Burbs and Turner & Hooch all leaned on his quick timing and everyman likability, and Big showed that the same gifts could carry real feeling. That film's Golden Globe win and Oscar nomination signaled that a different kind of career was possible.

The 1990s delivered it. After A League of Their Own and Sleepless in Seattle, he won Best Actor at consecutive Academy Award ceremonies for Philadelphia and Forrest Gump, a run that changed his reputation overnight. He followed it with Apollo 13, Toy Story, Saving Private Ryan, The Green Mile and Cast Away, and found time to write and direct the music comedy That Thing You Do!. Several of those titles still appear in conversations about the greatest films ever made.

From the 2000s on, his choices widened. He played a gangster in Road to Perdition, the symbologist Robert Langdon in The Da Vinci Code, Angels & Demons and Inferno, and a string of real people, among them Walt Disney in Saving Mr. Banks and Fred Rogers in A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood. More recently he has worked with Wes Anderson in Asteroid City and The Phoenician Scheme, played the title role in A Man Called Otto, and reunited with Zemeckis and Robin Wright for Here.

Long partnerships with Spielberg and Zemeckis run through the whole story. With Steven Spielberg he made Saving Private Ryan, Catch Me If You Can, The Terminal, Bridge of Spies and The Post. With Robert Zemeckis he made Forrest Gump, Cast Away, The Polar Express, Pinocchio and Here. Few actors have found directors who understood their strengths so completely, and much of his best work came from those collaborations.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the best Tom Hanks movie?

Saving Private Ryan takes first place for Hanks's restrained turn as Captain John Miller, narrowly ahead of Forrest Gump and Cast Away. Each ranks among the finest work of his career.

How many Oscars has Tom Hanks won?

He has won two Academy Awards, each for Best Actor: Philadelphia at the 1994 ceremony and Forrest Gump at the 1995 ceremony. His other nominations came for Big, Saving Private Ryan, Cast Away and, in the supporting category, A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood.

Which Tom Hanks movies did Steven Spielberg direct?

Spielberg directed Hanks in Saving Private Ryan, Catch Me If You Can, The Terminal, Bridge of Spies and The Post.

Which Golden Globes has Tom Hanks won?

He won Best Actor in a Musical or Comedy for Big, and Best Actor in a Drama for Philadelphia, Forrest Gump and Cast Away.

Related Articles

• Most Oscar Wins: The 15 Most Decorated Films Ever
• Best Romance Movies: 8 Dramas Ranked by Record
• Best Fantasy Movies: 8 Adventures Ranked by Record
• Denzel Washington Movies Ranked: His 10 Greatest Performances
• Leonardo DiCaprio Movies Ranked: The 10 Best, From Shutter Island to The Wolf of Wall Street