You’ve seen him scraggly bearded and bonding with a football on a desert island. You’ve seen him as a loveable simpleton in a white suit on a park bench, as the remarkable captain of a ship ravaged by pirates and as a prison warden on The Green Mile – but you most definitely have never seen Tom Hanks shimmying his way through a cheesy pop video.
Until this week, that is, when the promo for Carly Rae Jepsen's new song I Really Like You was unleashed on the world. Already the prime contender for Most Irritating Pop Song of 2015, the follow-up to Call Me Maybe sees Hollywood titan throw caution to the wind and giddily mime, dance and wink his way through three-and-a-half glorious minutes.
Of course, Hanks is far from the first big-name actor to pay a favour to a musician. Just this week, our own Cillian Murphy lent his services to 8:58, the new solo project by Orbital’s Paul Hartnoll.
The surreal video for The Clock sees the Corkman dressed as a clown, an astronaut, a chef and a 1990s raver, amongst other bizarre personas.
Murphy, like his fellow Irish actor Aidan Gillen, is a well-known music fan. Gillen, incidentally, previously appeared in the video for Sigur Rós's Ekki múkk and the Icelandic band also previously employed actor Shia LaBeouf for their Fjögur píanó video. LaBeouf more recently starred in the excellent video for Sia's Elastic Heart with child dance prodigy Maddie Ziegler, and even Game of Thrones' Natalie Dormer takes a starring role in Hozier's new video for Someone New.
It’s clear how musicians benefit from the exposure of a big-name star in their music promos, but what’s in it for the thesps? It seems that good old-fashioned kudos still counts for something in the music biz – and it’s true: we really, really, really like Tom Hanks even more after this.
