With a nickname like “America’s Dad,” Tom Hanks would have to be regarded as one of the most beloved actors of his generation. But a theory on the popular internet message board Reddit also presupposes that from 1992 to 2002, he also had the greatest run a leading actor has had in the history of Hollywood. And there’s a lot of evidence to back that up; In 1993 and 1994, he won the Academy Award for Best Actor for Philadelphia and Forrest Gump, respectively. The only other actor to win back-to-back was Spencer Tracy in 1937 and 1938.
A post by user “According_Gene2202” includes a timeline of the decade of Hanks film excellence in question:
Users of the “movies” subreddit responded with their own theories about which actor had the best consecutive decade in the history of film. One of the actors whose filmographies sprang to mind immediately was Al Pacino, who indisputably had a streak of movie success in the 1970s, and a little more disputably in the 1990s:
And if Pacino’s name is going to get thrown in the hat, then you know his Godfather II costar Robert DeNiro is going to be a contender:
The logical choice for anyone who grew up in the 1980s would be Han Solo/Indiana Jones himself, Harrison Ford.
And while Jim Carrey never achieved the kind of critical acclaim that the actors mentioned earlier enjoyed, you can bet he’s gone toe-to-toe with all of them in terms of box office success:
While there’s no question that a great many actors from the history of Hollywood have enjoyed an enviable string of success, none of them have done it and remained quite so beloved as Hanks.