Tom Hanks, Rita Wilson Test Positive for Coronavirus in Australia
FILE PHOTO – Actor Tom Hanks, one of the stars of the new film «Cloud Atlas,» poses with wife, actress Rita Wilson, as they arrive for the film’s premiere at Grauman’s Chinese theatre in Hollywood, California, October 24, 2012. REUTERS/Fred Prouser/File Photo
VOA News By Reuters
LOS ANGELES – Oscar-winning actor Tom Hanks and his wife, actress Rita Wilson, have both tested positive for coronavirus in Australia, the actor said via Twitter.
Hanks said that he and Wilson, who are both 63, were tested in Australia, where he is working on a film, after they felt tired and achy with slight fevers.
“To play things right, as is needed in the world right now, we were tested for the coronavirus and were found to be positive,” Hanks said in the tweet.
The film star said that he and Wilson would be “tested, observed and isolated” for as long as required. The couple are the first major U.S. celebrities known to have contracted COVID-19, which has infected more than 1,000 people in the United States.
“Not much more to it than a one-day-at-a-time approach, no? We’ll keep the world posted and updated,” Hanks said in the twitter post.
Hanks had traveled to Australia to begin filming an upcoming movie about Elvis Presley. He is set to play Presley’s manager, Colonel Tom Parker, in the Warner Bros. production.
“The health and safety of our company members is always our top priority, and we are taking precautions to protect everyone who works on our productions around the world,” Warner Bros., owned by AT&T Inc, said in a written statement.
It was not immediately clear if filming on the project would be postponed because of the actor’s illness.
Hanks won best actor Academy Awards for his role in 1994’s “Philadelphia,” in which he plays a man stricken with AIDS, and “Forrest Gump” the following year. Wilson has appeared in such films as “Sleepless in Seattle” and “Runaway Bride.”
More than 121,000 people have been infected with COVID-19 in 118 countries and more than 4,300 people have died of the virus, according to a Reuters tally. In the United States at least 37 people have died from the respiratory illness.