Rita Wilson has revealed that her husband, Tom Hanks, passed up an iconic role in 1989 because he was going through a divorce and could not relate to the character.
"People probably don’t know this but Tom was offered 'When Harry Met Sally,' and he turned it down because he was going through a divorce, and he was very happy to be not married," Wilson explained on Tuesday’s episode of iHeartPodcasts' "Table for Two with Bruce Bozzi."
"And so, he could not understand that a person going through a divorce would have anything other than just like, 'I’m so happy'" she added.
In the end, Billy Crystal played the role of Burns, who struggled to accept the dissolution of his marriage. He ended up earning a Golden Globe nomination at the 1990 ceremony.
Hanks was married to his first wife, Samantha Lewes, from 1978 to 1987. They had two children together, actor Colin Hanks and daughter Elizabeth Hanks.
Hanks and Wilson married in 1988 and had two sons together, Chet and Truman.
Hanks' illustrious career spans nearly 30 years, but of that time, the actor has admitted he only made four "pretty good" films.
The Academy Award-winner made the confession to People last year while discussing his novel, "The Making of Another Major Motion Picture Masterpiece," which is a fictional story about the making of a multimillion dollar superhero film.
"No one knows how a movie is made — though everyone thinks they do," Hanks said. "I’ve made a ton of movies (and four of them are pretty good, I think) and I’m still amazed at how films come together. From a flicker of an idea to the flickering image onscreen, the whole process is a miracle."
Hanks added: "Movie-making is very hard work over a very long period of time that consists of so many moments of joy slapped up against an equal number of feelings of self-loathing. It is the greatest job in the world and the most confounding of labors that I know of."
Zoe Papadakis ✉
Zoe Papadakis is a Newsmax writer based in South Africa with two decades of experience specializing in media and entertainment. She has been in the news industry as a reporter, writer and editor for newspapers, magazine and websites.
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