Photos show Tom Hanks in a movie, not after a health diagnosis – PolitiFact

Actor Tom Hanks makes regular cameos on PolitiFact’s website. Sometimes it’s because we’re debunking claims that he was arrested. Once, it was because someone wrongly said he had died.

Now, two photos showing Hanks in a hospital bed with a shaved head and oxygen mask are spreading on social media. 

“Tom Hanks wife Rita exposed his condition after he was spotted in a bad state,” a poorly punctuated Facebook post sharing a link with the photos says. “Tom will spend the remainder of his life in and out of hospitals.” 

The headline of the link says: “Tom Hanks’s wife Rita announced his diagnosis and fans are broken.” 

This post was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.)

First, those pictures are from the 1993 movie, “Philadelphia,” which starred Hanks as a gay man diagnosed with AIDS.  

Second, when we clicked on the link in the Facebook post, the headline on the website Journey Ranger is not the same headline that appears on Facebook. The headline on the site says: “Celebrities who have been living with hidden health conditions.” 

The post on the site mentions Hanks among other actors and says that he “revealed he had Type 2 diabetes in 2013.” His wife, actress Rita Wilson, is not mentioned. 

Hanks, not Wilson, spoke publicly about his diagnosis for the first time in a 2013 interview with David Letterman.

“I went to the doctor, and he said, ‘You know those high blood sugar numbers you’ve been dealing with since you were 36? Well, you’ve graduated! You’ve got type 2 diabetes, young man,’” Hanks said at the time. 

He told Letterman that the disease is “controllable.”

In 2020, Hanks and Wilson were diagnosed with COVID-19, but we couldn’t find any evidence to support the claim that Wilson has recently revealed something tragic about her husband’s health. 

We rate this post False.