Forrest Gump (character) childhood friend Jennifer Curran, who eventually becomes his wife. Tom Hanks portrayed the character in the film and earned an Academy Award for his performance, while Michael Conner Humphreys portrayed Forrest as a child. In 2008, Forrest Gump was named the 20th greatest movie character of all time by "Empire" magazine. Forrest was born near the small town of Greenbow, Alabama, on June 6, 1944. His father was absent during his life, and his mother said he was "on vacation". His mother named Forrest after their ancestor Nathan Bedford Forrest, a Scotch-Irish American and a noted Confederate general in the
Forrest Gump screenplay from the novel, had "...transferred all of Gump's flaws and most of the excesses committed by Americans in the 1960s and 1970s to her [Jenny]." Other commentators believe the film forecast the 1994 Republican Revolution and used the image of Forrest Gump to promote movement leader Newt Gingrich's traditional, conservative values. Jennifer Hyland Wang observes that the film idealizes the 1950s, as made evident by the lack of "whites only" signs in Gump's Southern childhood, and "revisions" ["sic"] the 1960s as a period of social conflict and confusion. She argues that this sharp contrast between the decades criticizes the