Tom Hanks Admits He’s Starred In Movies That Even He “Hates,” Confesses There’s “No Way To Tell” If A Film Is Actually Going To Be Good

By Radhamely De Leon
Published June 1, 2023, 4:08 p.m. ET

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Tom Hanks can confess: even he “hates” some of his own movies.

“OK, let’s admit this: We all have seen movies that we hate. I have been in some movies that I hate,” Hanks told David Remnick during a panel at The New Yorker Live, per Indiewire. “You have seen some of my movies and you hate them.”

The movie star went on to discuss the steps that actually go into signing onto a film and seeing it through, a process he called “so slow and so specific” that there is “no way to tell” if a movie is going to be a success.

“Here are the five points of the Rubicon that are crossed by anybody who makes movies: The first Rubicon you cross is saying yes to the film. Your fate is sealed. You are going to be in that movie,” Hanks began, launching into his explanation of the film. “The second Rubicon is when you actually see the movie that you made. It either works and is the movie you wanted to make, or it does not work and it’s not the movie you wanted to make.”

Tom Hanks in 'A Man Called Otto'
Photo: Niko Tavernise / © Sony Pictures Entertainment

“That has nothing to do with Rubicon No. 3, the critical reaction to it,” he continued. “Someone is going to say, ‘I hated it.’ Other people can say, ‘I think it’s brilliant.’ Somewhere in between the two is what the movie actually is.”

The “fourth Rubicon,” Hanks said, is the movie’s commercial performance, because “if it does not make money, your career will be toast sooner than you want it to be.”

The fifth Rubicon, he went on to explain, is time. He recalled when he released his directorial debut That Thing You Do! in 1996, which underperformed at the box office but went on to become a cult classic.

“Now the same exact publications that dismissed it in their initial review called it ‘Tom Hanks’s cult classic,'” he said. “So now it’s a cult classic. What was the difference between those two things? The answer is time.”

The actor is slated to appear in Wes Anderson‘s upcoming sci-fi drama Asteroid City.

It’s hard to believe Hanks could ever “hate” one of his roles, but what can we expect from an actor who has appeared in over 90 projects since 1980?