It’s a strange bit of Hollywood symmetry: two of the co-stars who anchored one of the biggest films of all time share the exact same birthday. Today, July 9, Hanna Hall, who played young Jenny Curran in Forrest Gump, turns 42. On the same day, her older co-star, Tom Hanks, turns 70. While neither of them shared a single scene together in the film, their lives are tied together by one of the most quoted lines in movie history.
“Run, Forrest! Run!”
That one line changed Hanna Hall’s life forever and made sure she would become part of movie history. She was just 10 at the time. Nearly 30 years later, the $55 million drama that grossed close to $680 million and won six Oscars still finds new audiences and still gets quoted across the globe.
And yes, people still stop Hall in the street and scream, “Run, Forrest! Run!”
How Hanna Hall Landed the Role of Young Jenny in Forrest Gump
Hall once told House of Horrors that landing the role was “very random.” Her manager at the time, Nina Axelrod, had left Los Angeles for Colorado and hosted an open casting call when Hall was just seven. “My mother didn’t want to take me. It was a Sunday afternoon and she really didn’t want to go, so I went with some friends and Nina ended up liking me.”
A few taped auditions later, she booked the part and that iconic line.
Growing Up After Forrest Gump: Hanna Hall’s Acting Journey
While you’d think that playing such an amazing character so young would set Hall on a journey for life, it didn’t. “It wasn’t a career that I was necessarily interested in at the time, but it was definitely something that I always enjoyed doing,” she told Indie Outlook.
She described Forrest Gump as “a very organic experience,” adding, “When you’re that age, you don’t question the fact that it’s not you.”
But as she got older, the separation between actor and character became harder to maintain. To everyone, she was always Jenny.
But as the years went on, she landed other roles – like Cecilia Lisbon in Sofia Coppola’s The Virgin Suicides in 1999 and Judith Myers in 2007’s Halloween remake. She even got parts in Criminal Minds, The Purge and Masters of Sex.
From Child Star To Intimacy Coordinator: Hanna Hall’s Career Shift
In 2005, Hall graduated from Vancouver Film School, sticking to the education plan she’d started as a child actor — only this time she studied Film Production rather than acting. Then she shifted gears entirely. Behind the scenes, she began directing underground, crowdfunded theatre. Her bio reads: “She is now committed to committing professional suicide by directing underground theater. It is her way of sweetly strangling the lame commercial world that robbed her of a childhood.”
Hall now works regularly as an intimacy coordinator, the on-set role responsible for making sure actors are safe and comfortable while filming intimate or sexually charged scenes. Speaking with Vancouver Film School for an alumni Industry Talk, Hall discussed how her time in the school’s Film Production program set her up for the pivot. Her credits in the role include Daisy Jones & The Six, I’m a Virgo, Twisted Metal and Netflix’s Tall Girl 2, along with more recent work on Kinds of Kindness and Lisa Frankenstein.
Hanna Hall Today: 42 Years Old And Still “Jenny” To Millions
The blonde curls are gone. But that voice yelling “Run, Forrest!” still echoes in our minds and hearts after all these years. Between Tom Hanks and Hanna Hall, one iconic scene has now spanned a 42nd and a 70th birthday. It will bind them forever.
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