Tom Hanks' Golden Globes Speech Proved He's Hollywood's Nicest Man, So His Next Role Is a Villain

Tom Hanks proved once again Sunday night that he's one of Hollywood's good guys as he collected the Cecil B. DeMille Award for lifetime achievement in film at the Golden Globe Awards.

Hanks, who broke down in tears as he thanked his wife Rita Wilson and his children, spent much of his acceptance speech dispensing advice to his fellow actors—the most important piece of wisdom being to show up on time. "That means those people with radios in the ears don't need to knock on your door and say they're ready for you, you're actually already ready," the veteran actor said.

The ever-humble Hanks also spoke highly of the directors he's worked with over the years, giving credit to the likes of Nora Ephron, Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg.

Hanks' speech, and the reaction to it, including Charlize Theron crying dramatically, underpinned the general sentiment that Hanks is as likeable in real life as the clean-cut, principled characters he has played in Forrest Gump, Philadelphia, Cast Away, Sully and most recently A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, for which his portrayal of Fred Rogers earned Hanks a 10th Golden Globes nomination.

Backstage at the Globes, however, Hanks, 63, revealed that there's still more he wants to achieve in his career—notably silencing his critics about never playing the role of a villain.

Hanks told reporters backstage that his next job involves playing a less savory character in Baz Luhrmann's upcoming Elvis Presley biopic. "Hopefully I will then have an answer to all your stupid questions about why will I never play a bad guy ... I think I'm about to do that," said Hanks.

Hanks is set to play Colonel Tom Parker in the Elvis movie, which will star Austin Butler as the famous rock-and-roll singer. Parker, Elvis' manager, demanded as much as 50 percent of the singer's income and was a divisive figure seen to be exploiting Elvis during his lifetime and even after his death. A posthumous investigation into Parker's management of Elvis in 1980 found that he had in some instances acted in an "unethical" manner.

As pointed out by Variety, however, Hanks has played the role of villain before—as a dubious tech CEO in 2017's The Circle. The thriller, also starring Emma Watson, did not garner much media attention and underperformed at the box office.

The as yet untitled Elvis movie is expected to film in Queensland, Australia, in the early part of 2020. It will be released worldwide by Warner Bros. in October 2021.