Tom Hanks says that before Apollo 13 started filming he only knew Bill Paxton as the “game over” guy from Aliens, something that became a running joke between the two.
While the two had never met previously, they were forced into becoming close by the circumstances of filming.
Since the only other person on the channel was director Ron Howard, the group ended up having long conversations just with each other.
Hanks remembers periods of downtime where the three of them were sitting on set waiting for the crew to get things ready, communicating through internal radios because they couldn’t speak to each other with their helmets on.