Why Tom Hanks turned down the greatest rom-com ever made
There are a lot of reasons to be grateful for Tom Hanks.
He’s anchored some of the most iconic films of the past five decades, from Saving Private Ryan to Toy Story. He’s one of the few Hollywood stars who seems genuinely approachable, and, as such, his characters have always been refreshingly relatable. It’s hard to imagine American cinema without him, and yet one of the things we can be most grateful to him for is a movie he didn’t make.
For more than a decade, Hanks was typecast as a lighthearted, comedic actor and rom-com guy. The movies from the 1980s that made him a star—Splash, Big, The Money Pit—were all romantic comedies. He was the perfect combination of charming and non-threatening, something that screenwriters of the period seemed to want for their comedic leading men who get the girl. But by the late ‘80s, he wasn’t feeling particularly lovey-dovey, which was why he turned down the chance to star in the single greatest romantic comedy ever made.
Nora Ephron had just written what was (as a reminder) the greatest romantic comedy script of all time, called When Harry Met Sally. Rob Reiner was slated to direct, and it was only natural that they would reach out to Hanks first, given his track record. The film follows more than a decade of the friendship between Harry and Sally, who met in college and stayed in touch after they moved to New York. Most of their friendship involves arguing, especially over whether or not women and men can be friends without letting sex get in the way. In the end, of course, sex does get in the way, but it turns out to be the best possible outcome.
In an interview in 2023, Hanks’s wife, Rita Wilson, explained why he passed on one of the most flawless scripts ever written. “He was going through a divorce, and he was very happy to not be married,” she explained (via Deadline). “And so he could not understand that a person going through a divorce would have anything other than just like, ‘I’m so happy’.”
This is an interesting take because most of the inspiration for Harry came from Reiner, who himself was divorced and enjoying being single. Harry is a pessimist, not a romantic, and he spends more than a decade enjoying not being with the love of his life. Hanks was probably in exactly the right headspace for the film, at least up until the last five minutes of it.
Regardless of his questionable interpretation of the script, it was clearly for the best. Billy Crystal took that role and ran with it, providing one of the greatest characters in rom-com history. Cynical, funny, and tender when it needs to be, his performance is spot on and dovetails perfectly with Meg Ryan’s portrayal of the romantic, neurotic Sally.
Ironically, Hanks and Reiner both found love during the production of When Harry Met Sally. The actor and Wilson were married even before the film was released, and Reiner and his wife, Michele Singer, met while the film was shooting and married around the time it hit theatres. Given their happily-ever-afters, it’s hardly surprising that they were more than happy to pair up for Sleepless in Seattle four years later. This time, Ephron was the writer and director while Hanks and Reiner acted. By that time, Hanks had no trouble playing a widower desperate to find the woman of his dreams.
