![\"Tom](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Tom-Hanks-2016-Far-Out-Magazine-F-1140x855.jpg\")
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(Credits: Far Out \/ Alamy)<\/p>\n
Sun 17 August 2025 16:15, UK <\/p>\n
Every jobbing actor would love nothing more than a guaranteed job and a steady paycheque, which begs the question as to why Tom Hanks<\/a> even bothered going to an audition for a role he didn\u2019t want.<\/p>\n At the time, he was a million miles away from winning consecutive Academy Awards for \u2018Best Actor\u2019 and becoming \u2018America\u2019s Dad\u2019, with rejection the order of the day. It took Hanks a while to gain a foothold in Hollywood, and when he was trying, he still decided to sabotage himself.<\/p>\n He wasn\u2019t even an unknown; he was a nonentity. Hanks wouldn\u2019t make his screen debut until 1980, which saw him cross film and television off the list with an appearance in an episode of The Love Boat<\/a> and a feature-length outing in the shoddy slasher, He Knows You\u2019re Alone, which indicates that he wasn\u2019t particularly choosy about the work.<\/p>\n However, he did have some principles, after revealing that he\u2019d conspired to bomb his way through an audition for a TV show he never wanted to be cast in. It\u2019s the age-old struggle of the jobbing actor: Hanks was just one of many making the rounds and performing screentests in the hopes of being hired, but he still knew where to draw the line.<\/p>\n \u201cI tested for the TV version of Breaking Away and didn\u2019t get it,\u201d he told Richard Schickel<\/a>. \u201cI tested for the TV version of\u2026 what was the Chevy Chase, Goldie Hawn movie? Foul Play.\u201d From the sound of it, he was specialising in auditioning for short-lived shows adapted from reasonably popular movies.<\/p>\n Peter Yates\u2019 Oscar-winning Breaking Away gave rise to a series of the same name that was cancelled after seven of its eight episodes aired, while the seven-time Golden Globe-nominated Foul Play was a box office hit that failed to resonate without its stars, faring even worse than Breaking Away by getting canned halfway through its ten-episode run.<\/p>\n Hanks definitely dodged a couple of bullets, but there was one he didn\u2019t want in the chamber to begin with. \u201cI tested for some show called Blue Jeans about a rock and roll band,\u201d he shared. \u201cI actually kind of learned how to sandbag the audition for that one, because I didn\u2019t want to do the role. If they gave me that job, I didn\u2019t want to have it.\u201d<\/p>\n The first two weren\u2019t long for the world, but he didn\u2019t have any problems giving his all in the screentest. Blue Jeans was an entirely different case, though, with the eventual superstar intentionally giving a shite audition because he wanted nothing to do with the show, which must have been awful, looking at how the other pair turned out.<\/p>\n There was at least a silver lining, with Hanks\u2019 soul-destroying trawl through the endless circuit eventually bringing him Bosom Buddies, an audition that finally got him his first major recurring role. It was cancelled after two seasons and 37 episodes, but it was the launchpad he\u2019d so desperately craved<\/a>, with the sitcom offering the chance to showcase his comedic talents, which came in very handy when his big-screen career began in earnest with Ron Howard\u2019s Splash.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Related Topics<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Credits: Far Out \/ Alamy) Sun 17 August 2025 16:15, UK Every jobbing actor would love nothing more…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":352256,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3935],"tags":[77,3943,1985,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-352255","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-hanks","11":"tag-uk","12":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115045509824348249","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/352255","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=352255"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/352255\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/352256"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=352255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=352255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=352255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}