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Decider is giving thanks for Tom Hanks and his illustrious film career by devoting a full week to the actor, his films, and his enduring influence on pop culture. It’s Hanksgiving Week!

“I was raised to be charming, not sincere.” – Prince Charming, Into The Woods

Romantic heroes are supposed to be rich, handsome, and above all, charming. This is something that has been ingrained in us since we were children. We were raised on fairy tales about Prince Charming and wooed by sweeping romances starring handsome rogues and polite gentlemen. At some point in the late 20th Century, and with ample help from Nora Ephron, Tom Hanks made us forget all about the allure of slick charm, and convinced us to fall helplessly in love with the Everyman.

Other movie stars have played the Everyman to great effect. Jimmy Stewart practically defined the archetype on the silver screen in films like The Philadelphia Story (in which he lost the girl to Cary Grant). Sometimes the ordinary fellow would win the girl, but usually someone a bit more charming would win out. Now, though, the Everyman practically always gets the girl. We root for the normal dude, the nice guy, the boy next door. It’s the rich, slick, “special” charmer that you have to look out for. This may be a bold statement, but I think this cultural shift is partially due to the work of Tom Hanks.

Tom Hanks became an unlikely romantic hero in the 1980s and 1990s in films like Splash, Joe Versus The Volcano, Sleepless in Seattle, and You’ve Got Mail. I say unlikely because he’s not the slick charmer of fairy tales. As my colleague, Tyler Coates, pointed out in his piece on Philadelphia, Hanks is “the friendly, safe, non-threatening Hollywood actor” that everyone knows and loves.

Hanks has an ability to make everything he does and says onscreen seem completely sincere. While actors are supposed to “hold the mirror up to nature,” most do so in a way that also reveals how insincere we are as humans. Even in our everyday interactions, we wear masks to charm one another. You smile and joke with your bagel guy, you hold the door open for strangers, you pretend to be interested in other people’s days. If we’re being completely honest with ourselves, there isn’t a minute of our lives that we don’t try to gussy ourselves up with a more appealing persona.

But not Tom Hanks.

Whether he’s playing a 12-year-old who has wished himself into the body of a 30-year-old, a lawyer coping with AIDS, or the head of a corporate bookstore conglomerate, Hanks exudes transparency. This isn’t to say that his characters are always completely honest, but Hanks appears to us as an emotional open book. We can immediately latch on to him and relate to his character’s emotional viewpoint. It’s why we’ve loyally followed him from network sitcoms to big screen comedies, emotional dramas, and war epics. He’s just easy to relate to. It’s also easy to fall in love with.

Hanks’ charm is that he seems to be devoid of artifice. It’s the anti-charming, and yet that’s precisely why it’s so lovable. As soon as we get to an age when we realize that charm is well-presented series of lies, we start to quietly discount it. If we’re wise enough, we learn to mistrust it altogether. Candor seems more appealing than charm. And so, when Tom Hanks honestly opens up on a radio talk show about his dead wife in Sleepless in Seattle, he morphs into the most attractive man on Earth. When Joe Fox opens up to Kathleen Kelly in You’ve Got Mail and reveals that he was NY152 the whole time — and that he loves her — we can’t help but to swoon.

Tom Hanks has given us an attractive alternative to the traditional Prince Charming. Tom Hanks has given us the idea that love is honesty, and that’s beautiful. Everyone has the power to tell the truth, and therefore everyone can fall in love. The Everyman you see everyday on the street could very well be the man of your dreams.

Of course, it’s important to note that every time Hanks is acting, he is, well, acting. He was always Prince Charming. He just used sincerity as his biggest trick.

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Photos: Everett Collection