(Credit: Warner Bros)
Sun 24 August 2025 20:15, UK
One fateful day while making 2022’s Elvis, Tom Hanks heard something that hit him like a bolt from the blue. He was listening to the dulcet tones of an Elvis Presley song, yes, but to his astonishment, it was one he’d never heard before in his life.
Interestingly, while Hanks eagerly agreed to play the King’s morally questionable manager, Colonel Tom Parker, in Baz Luhrmann’s biopic, he didn’t do it because he is an Elvis superfan. Hanks has always been a huge music devotee, and even set his directorial debut, That Thing You Do!, in the world of 1960s rock and roll, but when asked to name his favourite songs of that era, he rattled off 31 beloved tunes without once mentioning Elvis.
Having said that, Hanks has never been anti-Elvis, as such, and for years, he counted ‘Bossa Nova Baby’ as his favourite cut from the King’s extensive back catalogue. Elvis’ music simply never quite spoke to his sensibilities as strongly as the Beatles and the Dave Clark Five, who soundtracked most of the future Forrest Gump star’s childhood and adolescence.
Interestingly, Hanks was so unfamiliar with the inner workings of Elvis’ team that, when Luhrmann offered him the chance to play Parker, he didn’t even know what the infamous Dutch-American talent manager looked like. He was swayed, though, by the opportunity to play a character who simultaneously loved and exploited Elvis; someone who was a carnival barker through and through, and instantly recognised his good fortune when he got his hands on the most prodigious musical talent of an era. So, he proceeded to rinse every single penny he could from that talent.
“Parker was a mercurial and brilliant man who at the same time made sure he lined his own pockets,” Hanks told People. “He knew that about Elvis the first time he saw Elvis’ effect on an audience. He realized that guy was forbidden fruit, and you can make an awful lot of money on forbidden fruit.”
Ultimately, the chance to play a character with nuance, who wasn’t an outright villain but did some highly suspect things, appealed to Hanks so much that he willingly subjected himself to the prosthetic makeup process required to transform him into Parker. He found it to be one of the most rewarding roles of his career, even if audiences struggled to accept the fake nose and bizarre accent, and as he worked through the shoot, he even found himself becoming more accustomed to Elvis’ music.
Before the film, Hanks would have considered himself pretty familiar with a lot of Elvis’ discography, although his knowledge of the deep cuts would pale in comparison to a superfan. However, even he was surprised when he turned up for a day of dialogue re-recording on the scene in which Elvis first walks into his Graceland mansion in Memphis, Tennessee.
To Hanks’ ear, the song playing in the background sounded remarkably similar to Chuck Berry’s ‘You Never Can Tell’, an energetic number now indelibly linked to Pulp Fiction, given its hip-shaking involvement during John Travolta and Uma Thurman’s iconic dance sequence at Jack Rabbit Slim’s. “I screamed and said, ‘What the heck is that song?’” Hanks exuberantly recalled to USA Today. “Baz said, ‘We’ll send it to you.’”
Pretty soon, Hanks found himself listening to ‘I’m Comin’ Home’, the first track on side two of Elvis’ 1961 record Something for Everybody. He loved it so much that he asked himself, “Where has this song been hiding?” and unceremoniously kicked ‘Bossa Nova Baby’ off the top spot in his personal Elvis rankings. It all goes to show that, sometimes, maybe the best things in life really are worth waiting for.
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