The 2000 film starred Hanks, Helen Hunt and his volleyball costar Wilson
Credit: 20th Century Fox Film Corp./Everett Collection
NEED TO KNOW
- Tom Hanks reflected on the one scene from Cast Away that he makes sure he never watches
- Hanks said that in the moment, he wasn’t truthful to his character, Chuck, but to himself
- Nonetheless, the film made $429 million at the box office and earned Hanks a Best Actor nod at the Oscars
Tom Hanks is not a fan of the choices he made in this Cast Away scene.
Hanks, 69, opened up about the film and his long career in the June 18 episode of The Rest Is Entertainment podcast. The podcast hosts asked Hanks if there's any example of “mistakes” he made in his career that, "in hindsight, were actually a good thing.”
“I will say yes,” Hanks said. The Toy Story 5 actor said that it's “oddly cruel” sometimes how people ask what the best movie he's made is, but that it doesn't matter if something is a “commercial hit” because they are “all such profound experiences of success and failure.”
Hanks said that he doesn't really watch his movies after the first time “because they never change,” but that there are movies with moments in them that he “cannot watch” because he “didn't get there.”
Credit: 20th Century Fox Film Corp./Everett Collection
“And sometimes these are the big moments. I simply did not get there, and I know it, and I was confounded by any number of things,” he said.
Asked to name an example, Hanks said, “There is a moment that was painful for me in Cast Away.” In the film, Hanks plays Chuck, a FedEx systems analyst. Helen Hunt plays his girlfriend, Kelly. The pair wants to get married, but Chuck's busy job is in the way. Kelly gives Chuck her grandfather's pocket watch with a picture of her in it, just before he's called away on business once again.
Check out PEOPLE's weekly giveaway: Win a Yoto Player package valued at $260 only on the PEOPLE app!
Alas, Chuck ends up being the only survivor of a plane crash in the Pacific Ocean. He's been gone for four years before he's ultimately rescued. Upon arriving in the U.S., he learns Kelly is married.
Hanks remembered, “Chuck is back in Kelly's house, and he gives her [the] watch back, and there's a moment where I just think, ‘I'm not there.' . . . I do this gesture that I just think is false, and is me and is not Chuck.”
Hanks said, “If the movie is on, I will get up and leave the room before that scene comes on.”
Credit: Emma McIntyre/Getty for SiriusXM
Asked if he knew he messed up the scene while it was happening, Hanks said he had no idea. “It wasn't until I actually saw it when it went down. And I think that, ‘Oh, we were just moving on there and I wasn't there.' ”
Nonetheless, Cast Away, released in 2000 and directed by Robert Zemeckis, became a major success, bringing in over $429 million at the box office and making it the third-highest-grossing film of 2000. Hanks was nominated for Best Actor at the Oscars; the film was also nominated for Best Sound. Hanks also won the Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Motion Picture – Drama.
Over 25 years later, the movie is perhaps most memorable for Hanks' non-corporeal costar — a volleyball he draws a face on and names Wilson. Wilson becomes his companion through his four years as a castaway — before eventually floating away.
In May, Hanks “reunited” with Wilson when Mr. Met dressed up as the volleyball at a New York Mets game.
Read the full article here
