Tom Hanks has discussed his reputation as a “wedding crasher” after being repeatedly photographed with newly-wed couples.
In an interview to promote his role in Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis on chat show Late Night with Seth Meyers, the 65-year-old actor reflected on three times he’s appeared at strangers’ nuptials.
Initially the Forrest Gump star joked it was purely to serve his own ego, quipping: “I keep thinking, ‘What would these people like more than anything else to remember this magic day of days? Oh, I know: Me.’”
The first occurance was in Rome during the filming of 2009’s Angels & Demons, the sequel to The Da Vinci Code. A location shoot at the Pantheon inadvertently disrupted a wedding taking place at the same venue.
“It is a consecrated Catholic church,” recalled Hanks. “So we were shooting in front of it and lo and behold they had booked a wedding in there while we’re shooting stuff with trucks… and this limousine pulled up and it was the bride and the groom.”
Hanks was photographed navigating through equipment as he personally escorted the bride and her father to the altar.
The second incident took place in Pittsburgh, when Hanks and his wife Rita Wilson had a day off from filming 2019 Mr Rogers biopic A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood.
“Rita and I are going off for a walk somewhere on our day off and just as we were getting into our car, in the condominium part of the building, this wedding party was coming up to get into the biggest cocktail booze-cruise bus I’d ever seen,” explained Hanks, adding that he thought to himself: “Well, if the bride comes out, I jump out and take a pictures… well, she shows up, so yeah, I crashed their wedding photo.”
In March this year, Hanks actually earned an invite to a strangers’ wedding while in Pennsylvania shooting the forthcoming A Man Called Otto.
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Fan Krisna Poznik wrote to Hanks to ask if he’d officiate her wedding, and the actor agreed. “It was Krisna and her old man, as I like to call him. I had a couple of words to say, they wrote their vows and it was absolutely beautiful. And it was a great honour.”
When Meyers noted that all three couples are still together, Hanks replied: “There you go. I think a little fairy dust has been sprinkled upon the altar there.”