Tom Hanks has famously voiced the cowboy Woody in Disney Pixar’s iconic animated franchise Toy Story. However, it wasn’t until later on in his career that the legendary Hollywood star made his first Western film.
In 2020, Hanks starred in News of the World as Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd, an aging Civil War veteran. The story follows Kidd as he escorts a young orphan across the harsh Texas desert in search of her last surviving kin.
The film reunited with Captain Phillips director Paul Greengrass. However, that wasn’t the only reason why Hanks decided to take on his first and currently his only Western project.
“The actual job itself, the news reader, the guy who traveled from town to town to enlighten and connect an audience in diverse, small towns – Wichita Falls, what have you,” Hanks said in a 2020 interview, via Cinema Blend.
“I thought that’s a job that I would have wanted to have if I had been alive in the 1870s. I thought that would be fascinating. Because you’d be delivering both the service and also sort of like you’d be delivering a connectivity that people wouldn’t have.”
At the same time, Hanks was fascinated by the story of children who were captured and raised by Native American tribes, only to later be returned to their biological families.
“It happened very, very frequently,” Hanks said. “… That speaks to the nurture versus nature argument that I think is something that we would all identify with. What would we have thought if we had been those kids? Or if we had been the parents of those kids?”
US actor Tom Hanks poses in the press room with the Cecil B. DeMille award during the 77th annual Golden Globe Awards. FREDERIC J. BROWN / Getty Images
Tom Hanks’ News of the World Ranked Among Best Modern Westerns
Rotten Tomatoes published a curated list of the 100 best and highest-rated modern Westerns and Neo-Westerns. The popular movie review portal ranked News of the World No. 27 on the list.
Hanks’ film has an 88% Tomatometer score on the site. The outlet described the movie as a “slow but absorbing ride down a comfortingly familiar Western trail,” which featured Hanks in “peak paternal mode.”
News of the World ranks 15th among all of Hanks’ films based on its critics’ score on Rotten Tomatoes. It beat out a number of the Hollywood icon’s best works, including Cast Away, Road to Perdition, The Green Mile and even Philadelphia, in which he won his first of two Best Actor Oscars.
Related: 1993 Classic, Which Tom Hanks Was Considered Too Nice For, Ranked Among Funniest Movies Ever
This story was originally published by Men’s Journal on Aug 20, 2026, where it first appeared in the Entertainment section. Add Men’s Journal as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
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