{"id":233659,"date":"2025-07-03T03:25:10","date_gmt":"2025-07-03T03:25:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/233659\/"},"modified":"2025-07-03T03:25:10","modified_gmt":"2025-07-03T03:25:10","slug":"why-tom-hanks-rejected-a-role-written-for-him","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/233659\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Tom Hanks rejected a role written for him"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Tom<\/p>\n

(Credits: Far Out \/ YouTube Still)<\/p>\n

There aren\u2019t many films that have sparked as huge a cult following as Jerry Maguire, with Cameron Crowe<\/a>\u2018s 1996 tale about a sports agent who learns the true value of life sparking a global frenzy as people swooned over the central romance and endlessly quotable lines of dialogue. <\/p>\n

With Tom Cruise as the man who falls from grace, Ren\u00e9e Zellweger as his love interest, and Cuba Gooding Jr as the titular sports star, you couldn\u2019t ask for a more perfect cast, with the movie remaining one of the most heartwarming and feel-good films of the decade.\u00a0<\/p>\n

However, while the sight of Cruise screaming \u201cshow me the money!\u201d or drunkenly chatting to Zellweger\u2019s son about going to the zoo might be a core part of the movie\u2019s charm<\/a>, there was another actor who the lead role was originally written for, despite the fact that this retrospectively would have been a very bad idea. <\/p>\n

Given Cruise\u2019s generally serious soul, eager work ethic, and proclivity for roles that take him to dark and dangerous places, the casting of him as a self-serious agent who needs to learn how to prioritise love over his career was nothing short of genius. The final sequence in which Rod Tidwell steals the hearts of an entire stadium of people and Jerry sprints home to tell Dorothy he loves her is one of the greatest ending of any rom-com\/sports drama, with the last line of \u201cyou had me at hello\u201d being the final nail in the coffin to truly end us all. <\/p>\n

However, Tom Hanks revealed that as perfect as Cruise is, the screenplay was first written with him in mind for the role<\/a>, saying, \u201cWell, I will say without question, that is a great movie and it would have been fun. But I was already doing That Thing You Do! and I was too much infected with that to even be able to qualitatively say a yes or a no.\u201d<\/p>\n

Adding, \u201cIt\u2019s kind of embarrassing, because they went off and made such a great movie. I would feel like George Raft saying, \u2018Hey, I could have been in Casablanca.\u2019 Boy, that would have been a bad movie with George Raft, don\u2019t you think?\u201d <\/p>\n

Being rejected by Hanks would be a tough pill to swallow, but Crowe recalls the phone call in which Hanks broke the news and said, \u201cIt was one of those passes where you hang up and you go, \u2018Wow, that was a great phone call,\u2019 and somebody says, \u2018Is he going to do it?\u2019 and you go, \u2018No, he passed.\u2019 Tom Hanks could hold a seminar on how to say no to a project with class. I felt great and yet had no movie.\u201d <\/p>\n

Only Tom Hanks would know how to reject someone in the kindest way possible, and while it might have stung a little at the time, everyone now knows that fate works in mysterious ways, and the universe was getting its ducks in a row for Cruise to steal the show. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Related Topics<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Credits: Far Out \/ YouTube Still) There aren\u2019t many films that have sparked as huge a cult following…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":233660,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3935],"tags":[77,3943,15763,1985,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-233659","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-movies","10":"tag-tom-cruise","11":"tag-tom-hanks","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114787170684906611","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233659","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=233659"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233659\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/233660"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=233659"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=233659"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=233659"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}