Tom Hanks is shutting down the idea of a Best Voiceover category at the Oscars.
The two-time Academy Award winner is reprising his beloved role as Woody in the upcoming Toy Story 5, and despite widespread acclaim for his animated performances over the years, he doesn’t believe they’ve been Oscar-worthy — and he’s pushing back on adding a new category to accommodate them.
“I think they have enough categories,” he told Gold Derby during a recent interview at Pixar Animation Studios. “The truth is, a voice actor can win Best Actor. The judgment is, ‘any performance that moved you.’ We’ve talked about Andy Serkis (The Lord of the Rings, The Planet of the Apes franchises). Even though he does not appear as Andy Serkis, he gives all the raw material for it. There’s been people who have been close to being nominated that do not appear on camera. That could happen to a pure-vocal actor.”
It’s a fair point, and there’s precedent to back it up. Beyond Serkis, Scarlett Johansson mounted a strong Supporting Actress campaign for voicing an artificial intelligence named Samantha in Spike Jonze’s 2014 Best Picture nominee Her — earning a nod at the Critics Choice Awards along the way. And back in 2002, Eddie Murphy picked up a BAFTA nomination for Best Supporting Actor for his work as Donkey in Shrek.
The Emmys, notably, have already gone in the opposite direction — the Primetime Emmy Awards split voiceover into two distinct categories: Best Character Voice-Over Performance and Best Narrator. Hanks himself was nominated in the latter for The Americas in 2025.
Still, Hanks is emphatic about the Oscars and Academy voters: “If they are moved — that means, they are moved by a human being’s performance — that’s all the requirement.”
Toy Story 5 opens in theaters June 19.
