“Could a straight man do what I did in Philadelphia now? No, and rightly so,” Hanks said to The New York Times Magazine. “The whole point of Philadelphia was, ‘Don’t be afraid.’ One of the reasons people weren’t afraid of that movie is that I was playing a gay man.”
“We’re beyond that now, and I don’t think people would accept the inauthenticity of a straight guy playing a gay guy,” he continued. “It’s not a crime, it’s not boohoo, that someone would say we are going to demand more of a movie in the modern realm of authenticity. Do I sound like I’m preaching? I don’t mean to.”