Tom Hanks Discusses How He Came Up With the ‘Forrest Gump’ Voice [Video]
Tom Hanks was a guest recently on The Graham Norton Show and the subject matter was Hanks' 1994 hit movie for which he earned an Oscar, Forrest Gump.
Hanks was asked by Norton how he came up with the voice for his character Forrest. Surprisingly, Hanks revealed that the voice for adult Forrest actually came from the actor that played young Forrest in the movie, Michael Connor Humphreys.
Hanks explained that Director Robert Zemeckis had instructed him that old Forrest and young Forrest had to have similar speech patterns, but instead of trying to get Humphreys, who was 7 or 8 at the time, to speak like him, Hanks would change to speak like Humphreys.
Humphreys was from Mississippi and had a very strong accent with hard-accented Gs. Hanks recorded hours of conversations with him and, after a great deal of work, the Forrest Gump voice was born!