20 Things You Didn’t Know About The Green Mile

Tom Hanks is uniformly agreed by all who’ve ever met him to be the living embodiment of pleasant awesomeness, and tales from the Green Mile set do nothing to contradict his reputation.

Every Friday night, dinner was on Hanks: he’d order in a specific type of cuisine for the entire cast and crew, from sushi one week to In n’ Out burgers the next.

Whenever Stephen King visited the set, Hanks would remain in character: King didn’t meet Hanks, he met Paul Edgecomb. At one point King asked if he could sit in the chair but Hanks point blank refused, because Old Sparky was his responsibility as the guard in charge of the block.

Doug Hutchison wagered the extras that they couldn’t call his lines during Delacroix’ execution scene and was flabbergasted when they got it right and he had to pay up. Unfortunately, what he didn’t realise is that Hanks had written the lines on giant cue cards placed behind him.

Duncan was reportedly incredibly self-conscious about the scene where Coffey heals Edgecomb’s urinary infection, because it would involve holding Hanks by the groin. When it came time to do the scene, Duncan discovered that Hanks had placed an empty plastic water bottle in his trousers to make things easier for him.

Finally, Hanks was invited to place his handprints in the cement outside of Grauman’s Chinese Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard during the shoot, an honour that means as much as an award to many Hollywood stars - it’s a sign that you’ve ‘made it’. Hanks didn’t suspend shooting to attend the ceremony, but ran over to place his hands during his lunch break, legging it back to set in time to read off-camera lines for Hutchison’s coverage scenes. That job could just as easily have been done by a member of the crew - but Hanks knew that actors prefer to act opposite other actors, and cut his big moment short to support one of his peers.