Following the veritable barrage of sexual misconduct and related allegations against several big names in Hollywood and the general media, veteran actor and two-time Academy Award winner Tom Hanks speaks out.
In a roundtable discussion on Hollywood Reporter along with other veterans of the silver screen, Willem Dafoe, Sam Rockwell, James Franco, Gary Oldman and John Boyega, Hanks talks about the Hollywood environment needing everyone to follow a “code of professional ethics” in order to change things.
“It’s never too late to change things,” said Hanks, adding that making a movie was a “life experience that can create an awful lot of joy,” but that “the bad stuff can happen on a movie as well.”
“There’s some people that go into this business because they got off on having power. We produced a project in which someone said, ‘There’s an element of harassment that’s going on here.’ And as soon as we heard, you’ve got to jump right in. You talk to everyone, the guilds and you find out what happened.”
Hanks also opines that there is an aspect of film-making that is predatory in nature, which he believes is a sin and a crime:
“There’s the other aspect of it is that, ‘Come try to get this job from me. You want me to give you a job? Come on. Come. Come prove to me that you want this job.’ That’s a sin, and that’s against the law and that is a degree of harassment and predatory behavior that goes against an assumed code of ethics.”
Tom Hanks has won several accolades, not the least of which were two consecutive Oscar wins for his performances in Philadelphia (Best Actor, 1994) and Forrest Gump (Best Actor, 1995). He has also been nominated for Big (Best Actor, 1989), Saving Private Ryan (Best Actor, 1999) and Cast Away (Best Actor, 2001.)
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Quotes and Featured Image courtesy The Hollywood Reporter
