Tom Hanks is opening up about his early acting career — and the two best friends who helped him out in the earliest days — in the new cover story for the Oct./Nov. issue of AARP the Magazine.
Hanks reminisces about his actor friends George Maguire and Michael John McGann, the two actors he met when he was just starting out at the Great Lakes Shakespeare Festival in Cleveland in 1978. The duo insisted that Hanks had to move to New York City to get his career going.
“George and Michael John made the quick work of telling me: I would go to New York! Just as they had! New York City is where actors and artists go to test their talent and wherewithal!” Hanks writes in the essay.
Hanks continues to talk about what their loyalty and friendship meant to him. Michael John helped Hanks cosign his very first lease, a beat-up fourth-floor walk-up in Hell’s Kitchen. George loaned him a winter coat when he didn’t have one, as well as some furniture and an old portable black and white TV.
Hanks talks about the three of them doing their taxes together during a snowstorm in the early ’80s.
“When those to pros showed me how to file my return so I’d get a refund from the IRS for nearly $600, the first moment of solvency in my adult life, I thought I had won the lottery,” he says.
The star of A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, 63, says the friends are still close pals to this day.
“They were the kind of actor I wanted to be,” he writes. “And the kind of human being I hope to become.”
A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood hits theaters on Nov. 22.
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