Inside Tom Hanks' Friendship With Bruce Springsteen
Long-term celebrity friendships are really fun to watch from afar, and the relationship between Tom Hanks and Bruce Springsteen is no exception. It turns out that these two met back in 1993 and have been ever close since.
Hanks and Springsteen were brought together when they both worked on the film Philadelphia (via IMDb). Hanks starred alongside Denzel Washington in what would become known as a groundbreaking piece of work about the AIDS epidemic, while Springsteen contributed a song "Streets Of Philadelphia." Both men even won Oscars for their parts.
In 2017, the two good friends delighted the audience at that year's Tribeca Film Festival when Hanks interviewed Springsteen for more than an hour live onstage (via The A.V. Club). They covered just about everything, most notably the 1970s and Springsteen's confusion over whether or not he actually had to pay taxes. As he joked to Hanks, back when he was just starting out, the rock star had "never met anyone in New Jersey who paid their taxes."
Tom Hanks and Bruce Springsteen share other famous friends
That wasn't the only time these best friends hung out that year. In April 2017, Tom and Bruce joined none other than Oprah Winfrey and Barack and Michelle Obama on vacation. The group all set sail on a 450-foot yacht off the coast of Tahiti.
While details of the trip are still pretty scarce, the idea of these five vacationing together isn't as far-fetched as you might think. Winfrey has been close friends with the Obamas since 2007, and Springsteen was described as "pretty much a regular visitor to the White House" by The Guardian in January 2017.
President Obama even honored Springsteen and Hanks with Presidential Medals of Freedom. At the ceremony that year, he noted that "Part of the reason these events are so special to me is that everybody on this stage has touched me in a very powerful, personal way. These are folks who have helped me become who I am."