My TV show had been cancelled; nothing else had gone anywhere; some alliances I had made petered out and nothing came of them and I was looking at a long, long year ahead of me in which there was no work on the horizon, the phone wasn't ringing. I had two kids, one of them a brand-new baby, and I didn't know if I would be able to keep my house.

Next he teamed up with American Beauty director Sam Mendes for the adaptation of Max Allan Collins's and Richard Piers Rayner's graphic novel Road to Perdition in which he played an anti-hero role as a hitman on the run with his son. Tom Hanks's character was less than thrilled about his son's career decision. In Philadelphia he played a gay lawyer with AIDS who sues his firm for discrimination.

2 billion at the United States box office alone and over $8. As of 2012 Hanks' films have grossed over $4.