TomHanks" class="body-link" data-vars-item-name="BL-8691296-/topic/TomHanks" data-vars-event-id="c6">Tom Hanks occupies a uniquely rarefied position in Hollywood. He is acknowledged as one of the great leading men of the past 30 years – but also as an outstanding character actor. What’s easily forgotten is that, before he was Tom Hanks, Spielberg collaborator and Lord of the Romcom, he was Tom Hanks, that clowning kidult from Big (whose director Penny Marshall recently died). But then, 25 years ago, Hanks starred in a movie that radically upended perceptions of who and what he was as an actor.That film was, of course, Philadelphia , in which 37-year-old Hanks played a gay man wasting away from Aids . It was released in the US on 22 December 1993 and carried with it the ambitions of a group of Hollywood talents whose careers had converged at an unlikely time and place.For readWith subscriptionWithout the adsThe biggest impact was obviously on Hanks. Today, he is our foremost Everyman Movie Star – equally convincing emoting to a volleyball ( Cast Away ), throwing sad glances at Meg Ryan ( Sleepless in Seattle, You’ve Got Mail ) or exuding gale force gravitas for Spielberg ( Saving Private Ryan, Bridge of Spies ).But such a status was hard won and for long time seemed beyond his reach. Hanks’s early years of stardom were all about him being the gentle punchline in his own films. He was a big lolling puppy, the most adorable one in the room even when acting opposite an actual adorable pet as he did in 1989’s Turner and Hooch. Hanks regarded Philadelphia as, among other things, an opportunity to prove himself a serious performer. He’d already flubbed his first chance to cast off the comedy shackles when starring in Brian De Palma’s disastrous 1990 adaptation of Tom Wolfe’s the Bonfire of the Vanities.