Tom Hanks is paying tribute to Jim Lovell, who died Thursday at age 97. 

Hanks, who famously played Lovell in Apollo 13, described him in an Instagram post as the kind of person who “lead[s] others to the places we would not go on our own.”

Tom Hanks played Jim Lovell in ‘Apollo 13’ 

Lovell was best known as the commander of the Apollo 13 mission. The 1970 spaceflight – Lovell’s fourth – was intended to take him and two other crew member to the moon. But when an oxygen tank exploded mid-flight, the three men had to abort the moon landing and focus on getting back to earth safely. 

The trio’s harrowing ordeal was chronicled in Ron Howard’s Oscar-nominated 1995 movie about the near-disaster. Lovell himself had a cameo as the captain of the USS Iwo Jima, the U.S. Navy ship that rescued the astronauts after they splashed down in the Pacific Ocean. 

On Friday, Hanks took to Instagram to recognize Lovell and his accomplishments.  

“There are people dare, who dream, and who lead others to the places we would not go on our own,” Hanks wrote. “Jim Lovell, who for a long while had gone farther into space and for longer than any other person on our planet, was that kind of guy.” 

“His many voyages around the Earth and on to so-very-close to the moon were not made for riches or celebrity but because such challenges as those are what fuels the course of being alive – and who better than Jim Lovell to make those voyages,” the actor continued. “On this night of a full moon, he passes on – to the heavens, to the cosmos, to the stars. God speed you, on this next voyage, Jim Lovell.”

Ron Howard says Jim Lovell was ‘melancholy’ about never making it to the moon 

Howard, who got to know Lovell while making Apollo 13, said that he wanted to capture a nuanced story of a man who didn’t achieve his ultimate dream. 

“When you would talk to Jim, even as we were making the movie, [he] had a lot of melancholy still about the fact that he had not ever made it to the moon,” Howard recently told Letterboxd. “There was kind of something very emotional about that to me.”

While Lovell was involved in the production of Apollo 13, he – perhaps surprisingly – did not serve as the film’s technical advisor. 

“You know, our technical advisor on the film was not Jim Lovell,” Howard said in a 2023 interview with the Library of Congress. “He felt too close to the story to commit himself to that. I also felt like it might be a little bit intimidating for the cast to have the actual Jim Lovell around constantly.” 

“Turns out that wouldn’t have been the case,” Howard continued. “He is an incredible guy and remained a huge asset for the film. He was so informative and very accessible.”

Apollo 13 is available to rent or buy on Amazon, Fandango, and other platforms. It will be rereleased in Imax on September 19. 

For more​​ news and exclusive interviews, follow Showbiz Cheat Sheet’s Instagram.