Tom Hanks and Robin Wright Wore Girdles, Used A.I. to Get ‘Rid of the Saggy Neck’ as 17-Year-Olds in “Here”
In the film from director Robert Zemeckis, the former 'Forrest Gump' costars play a couple whose relationship spans decades
To play teenagers in their new movie Here, Tom Hanks and Robin Wright relied on movie magic — and some close-fitting undergarments.
The film, which reunites the former Forrest Gump costars with director Robert Zemeckis, follows Richard (Hanks) and Margaret Young (Wright) over the course of several years as they fall in love, get married and have a family together.
For the scenes when Hanks, 68, and Wright, 58, portrayed the younger versions of Richard and Margaret, Wright shared exactly how A.I. technology de-aged them in a new interview with The New York Times.
“It’s literally data they derived from interviews Tom and I did when we were 18, 19, 21; still photographs; stuff that is online. They deposit it into this machine, and they made us up to look 17,” she said.
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Related: Tom Hanks and Robin Wright Reunite with Forrest Gump Director for Life-Spanning Drama Here: Trailer
Wright and Hanks did contribute, too, she added: “We wore the costumes, we had girdles when we had to be young.”
“We were acting physically, raising the octave in our voice, to be a 17-year-old,” Wright said elsewhere in the interview. “But A.I. gave us the innocence in the eyes and the youthful skin. And got rid of the saggy neck.”
The experience of seeing themselves de-aged in real-time on a monitor as soon as they filmed a scene was “kooky,” Hanks told PEOPLE at the Oct. 25 world premiere of Here at the AFI Fest in Los Angeles.
“That was like the gimmicky kind of aspect of it, because you could do that with regular makeup if you want to do that. But because we have this other super fast-filter computer that happened right then and there, we don't have to wait for the post-production process to view [ourselves as young].”
But for Hanks, playing an adolescent wasn’t the biggest challenge. It was portraying someone on the cusp of middle age.
“The hardest for us was when we were playing 35. That time when your metabolism stops, gravity starts tearing you down, your bones start wearing off. You stand differently,” he told Entertainment Tonight.
Here is in theaters now.