[1] Hanley and his editing partner Mike Hill have had a notable collaboration with the director Ron Howard, having edited all of Howard's films since Night Shift (1982).
An important aspect of the partnership is that the two editors have developed a sufficiently uniform style that they can simply split up the scenes of each film without specialization.
[2] In addition to Apollo 13, Hanley and Hill have been nominated for Academy Awards for Howard's A Beautiful Mind (2001), Cinderella Man (2005), and Frost/Nixon (2008).
Apollo 13 was listed as the 48th best-edited film of all time in a 2012 survey of members of the Motion Picture Editors Guild.
[3] Hanley has been elected as a member of the American Cinema Editors.