How Tom Hanks Played 6 Characters in “The Polar Express”, Including Santa Claus
- - How Tom Hanks Played 6 Characters in “The Polar Express”, Including Santa Claus
Victoria EdelDecember 25, 2025 at 5:00 AM
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Tom Hanks (left); Tom Hanks as the conductor in 'The Polar Express' (right) -
In 2004’s The Polar Express, Tom Hanks played a whopping six characters
Director Robert Zemeckis used performance capture technology to mimic the book by Chris Van Allsburg as closely as possible
Van Allsburg told PEOPLE, ‘The film brought the book to life’
Since 2004, The Polar Express film has been captivating legions of children (and adults) every holiday season. The movie adapted the book of the same name by Chris Van Allsburg, which became a bestseller when it was published in 1985.
But Van Allsburg, 76, wasn’t sure The Polar Express, about a boy whose trip to the North Pole convinces him of Santa Claus’ existence, could ever make it to the big screen. “[It] doesn't have characters who are toys come to life, and I didn't think animation was capable of creating believable human characters," he told PEOPLE in 2004. What's more, the author, who also wrote Jumanji, added, "So many children's films utilize pop culture references, tidal waves of irony, inappropriate comedy around flatulence...."
But then Tom Hanks approached Van Allsburg in 2001 about optioning the book. “It was clear that he wanted to make a different kind of story," the author said.
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Santa Claus and the Hero Boy in 'The Polar Express'
The book has a very specific art style, and Van Allsburg felt the movie managed to match it. "It's not simply a film that looks like the book," he told PEOPLE. "The film brought the book to life."
So how did it happen? Hanks, now 69, and director Robert Zemeckis used Performance Capture technology, at the time less well-known than motion capture. Hanks’ entire body — including his face — was covered in up to 150 reflectors to capture all his movements, which were then mapped on to the characters that existed in the film. Motion capture, meanwhile, cannot recreate facial expressions in the same way.
"I didn't want the movie to look like animated cartoons," Zemeckis told Wired in 2004. "But live action would look awful, and it would be impossible – it would cost $1 billion instead of $160 million. . . . We never wanted it to be photo-realistic or CG-animated. We wanted it to be somewhere in between."
Not only did Hanks capture his performance in this technologically advanced (and still expensive) way, but he also physically performed six of the characters. He played the three main adult characters: the conductor who runs the Polar Express, the “hobo” who lives on top of the train and terrorizes the children on board of the train and Santa Claus. As the hobo, he also voices a Scrooge puppet in a pivotal scene.
But perhaps most interestingly, Hanks also provided the performance capture for the film’s main character, referred to in the credits as the Hero Boy. When the Hero Boy is a child, Daryl Sabara provided his voice, but it’s Hanks’ expressions and body movements that were made smaller for the child character.
Hanks also played the Hero Boy’s father and served as the film’s narrator, bringing his total number of characters to six. "We just played,” Hanks told Wired about bringing his characters to life. “I passed gas the first day on set and that put everyone in the mood."
Hanks said in a 2004 interview with IGN that Zemeckis originally wanted him to “play every role.”
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Tom Hanks as the conductor in 'The Polar Express'
“But I said, 'Well, wait a minute. There's girls in this movie. I'm going to play every elf?' He said, 'Yeah, it'll be great,’ ” Hanks remembered. But there was “only so much” he could do in a day as an actor and keep track of, so other actors were brought in for other characters.
As for the character he did portray, he said it helped that “they all were extremely different.” They only wore the costumes for their characters once, and after that “had to remember” the details of them. “I would change my shoes depending on which character I would play based on, 'Who am I this time, Bob?' ” The different shoes for the boy and the conductor helped him ground them.
But Hanks was also thrilled about the opportunities the technology opened up for the future. “What this can do from an actor's point of view is, quite frankly, is free us up to a huge degree,” he said. Though he had visions of actors playing any part he wanted, he said at the time it was still “pretty prohibitively expensive.”
The Polar Express made over $300 million at the box office. Seasonal viewers on cable — and now on streaming — have helped introduce the movie to new legions of fans over the past two decades.
Zemeckis later used the performance capture technology on his 2007 film Beowulf and his 2009 adaptation of A Christmas Carol. James Cameron, famously, has greatly used performance capture throughout his Avatar film series. Hanks and Zemeckis (who also worked together on 1994’s Forrest Gump) also used technology to de-age Hanks and Robin Wright in the 2024 drama Here.
on People
Source: “AOL Entertainment”
