To Call In or Not to Call In
Let’s face it – no one wants to go to work when they’re sick. But what if you’re an actor and the very expensive production has its timeline, and things need to be done on time? Calling in sick when you’re shooting a high-budget film isn’t so easy. Tom Hanks happened to get very sick with the flu on a very important day of shooting. He was going to appear in the football running scene, and he made himself get to “work” that day.
Source: Sky.com
By the way, after an hour and a half of reading the movie script, Tom Hanks signed on. But he only agreed to take the role on the condition that the movie would be historically accurate. He even wanted to ease Forrest’s Southern accent at first. But director Robert Zemeckis eventually persuaded him to keep the heavy accent that was originally stressed in the novel. Hanks patterned his accent after Michael Conner Humphreys (the younger Forrest) who really talked that way.