10 Movie Characters Who Look Nothing Like Their Source Material
4. Tom Hanks as Robert Langdon - The Da Vinci Code, Angels and Demons and Inferno
Tom Hanks is the cinematic equivalent of America's dad. Embodying the spirit of the affable US everyman, Hanks is about as close to "universally beloved" as one can hope to become in the shark tank of public opinion that is Hollywood.
What Hanks is categorically not is a "Harrison Ford in Harris tweed" type. The central protagonist of thriller megahits in the vein of The Da Vinci Code and The Lost Symbol, Professor Robert Langdon is described by author Dan Brown as boyishly handsome, possessing a swimmer's body and a baritone voice that sounds like "chocolate for the ears".
This writer loves Tom Hanks as much as the next person, but let's be reasonable here. While he is roughly the same height as his fictional charge, Hanks is pushing 50 in his earliest appearance as Langdon and looks like it. The actor's build also isn't quite the debonair mental image cultivated by Brown's writing.
It's worth noting that Langdon always relies on his analytical thinking and eidetic memory to save the day, so Hank's appearance doesn't hurt the unimaginative movies any more than their overall inherent awfulness does. With that being said, this is still a stinker of a casting choice.