Tom Hanks Says Great Voice Performances Belong in Acting Categories

Desk

June 12, 2026

Tom Hanks has weighed in on one of Hollywood’s long-running awards debates, arguing that voice actors deserve greater recognition from the Academy Awards but not through the creation of a separate Oscar category.

The two-time Academy Award winner shared his views while promoting Toy Story 5, where he reprises his iconic role as Woody more than three decades after the original film launched Pixar’s beloved franchise. While many industry observers have called for a dedicated Oscar category for voice acting, Hanks believes exceptional voice performances should instead compete alongside traditional acting performances in the Academy’s existing categories.

According to Hanks, the Oscars do not need additional categories to recognize voice work. Instead, he believes the Academy should focus on the quality of a performance and its ability to connect with audiences, regardless of whether the actor appears physically on screen. “I think they have enough categories,” Hanks said. “The truth is, truly, a voice actor can win Best Actor. The judgment is ‘any performance that moved you.'”

The actor’s comments arrive at a time when discussions about performance recognition continue to evolve across the entertainment industry. While voice actors have played a vital role in some of cinema’s most beloved animated films, they have historically remained absent from the Academy’s acting categories. Although the Oscars introduced the Best Animated Feature category in 2002, voice performers themselves have never received recognition in the major acting races.

Hanks believes the issue is not the lack of a dedicated category but rather how performances are evaluated. For him, acting should be judged on emotional impact rather than visibility. If a performance moves audiences, it should be considered worthy of recognition regardless of whether the actor appears in front of a camera or behind a microphone.

To support his argument, Hanks pointed to acclaimed performer Andy Serkis, whose groundbreaking work in motion-capture acting has frequently sparked conversations about awards recognition. Over the years, Serkis has earned widespread praise for bringing characters such as Gollum in The Lord of the Rings trilogy and Caesar in the Planet of the Apes franchise to life through performance-capture technology.

Despite audiences rarely seeing Serkis himself on screen, Hanks argued that the actor remains the creative force behind those performances. The technology may alter the appearance of the character, but the emotions, physicality, and performance all originate from the actor.

“Even though he does not appear as Andy Serkis, he gives all the raw material to it,” Hanks explained. “There’s been people who have been close to being nominated that do not appear on camera. That could happen to a pure-vocal actor.”

The comparison is particularly relevant in an era where advances in digital filmmaking continue to blur the boundaries between traditional acting, voice work, and performance capture. As visual effects and animation become increasingly sophisticated, questions about how the industry defines acting have become more prominent.

For decades, animated films have relied on powerful voice performances to bring their characters to life. Many of the most memorable characters in modern cinema exist largely because of the actors behind them. Yet those performances have traditionally been recognized through the success of the film itself rather than through individual acting awards.

Tom Hanks‘ perspective offers an alternative to the growing calls for a separate voice acting Oscar. Rather than creating a new category, he believes voice actors should be eligible to compete directly against live-action performers if their work is deemed worthy of consideration. Such an approach would place voice acting on equal footing with other forms of performance instead of treating it as a separate discipline.

The conversation is likely to continue as animation remains one of the industry’s most popular and commercially successful forms of storytelling. At the same time, motion-capture performers and voice actors continue to push the boundaries of what acting can look like in modern filmmaking. Hanks’ comments also carry particular weight given his long association with one of cinema’s most iconic animated characters. Since first voicing Woody in 1995’s Toy Story, he has helped shape a franchise that has become a landmark in animation history and demonstrated the power of voice performances to create lasting emotional connections with audiences across generations.

As animation and performance-capture technologies continue to evolve, the debate surrounding awards recognition is unlikely to disappear anytime soon. Whether voice performances eventually break into the Academy’s acting races remains to be seen, but Hanks believes the opportunity already exists. The actor shared his views during a recent conversation with Gold Derby while promoting Toy Story 5, arguing that exceptional voice performances should be judged by the same standards as any other acting performance.

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