![\"Tom](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Tom-Hanks-Actor-2023-Far-Out-Magazine-1140x855.jpg\")
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(Credits: Far Out \/ Raph_PH)<\/p>\n
Tue 30 September 2025 19:15, UK <\/p>\n
Even though Penny Marshall\u2019s Big had earned Tom Hanks<\/a> his first Academy Award nomination and won him a maiden Golden Globe, it wasn\u2019t until the early 1990s that he finally shook off the tag of being a comedy performer, first and foremost.<\/p>\n While his breakthrough turn as Josh Baskin was good enough to be ranked among the five best performances of the year at the Oscars, it was still a comedic film. Hanks has pointed to 1986\u2019s Nothing in Common as his first serious taste of dramatic acting<\/a>, but it wasn\u2019t enough to break him out of his wheelhouse.<\/p>\n The likes of the small-screen sitcom Bosom Buddies, a guest spot on Happy Days, Ron Howard\u2019s Splash, Richard Benjamin\u2019s The Money Pit, and Joe Dante\u2019s The \u2018Burbs had established Hanks as one of the industry\u2019s fastest-rising comedy stars, but he wasn\u2019t of a mind to be permanently pigeonholed.<\/p>\n Would things have turned out differently had he accepted a leading role in a classic parody that only gets more beloved by the year? Probably not, seeing as he\u2019s proven himself as being far too talented not to make it to the top. Even more remarkably, he wasn\u2019t even the only future superstar named Tom to turn down Mel Brooks\u2019 Spaceballs.<\/p>\n The Star Wars spoof wasn\u2019t a runaway hit at the box office, but the fact that a sequel is set to be released 40 years after the original<\/a> is proof enough that Brooks\u2019 space opera has longevity. The Han Solo surrogate, Lone Starr, was played by Bill Pullman in his first major movie gig, and he admitted that he was way down the pecking order when the filmmaker was searching for the picture\u2019s straight man.<\/p>\n Brooks and his wife, Anne Bancroft, had caught a play that Pullman was acting in, and when they met for the first time, he was told that he wasn\u2019t the first choice. \u201cWhen I got it and went in to meet him, he said, \u2018I tried to get a Tom and I couldn\u2019t get him,’\u201d he recalled to Geek Tyrant<\/a>. \u201c\u2018I tried to get Tom Cruise, Tom Hanks, and I couldn\u2019t get them, so I got a Bill!\u201d And I said, \u2018Is that a joke, Mel?’\u201d<\/p>\n It was a reasonable question, given Brooks\u2019 penchant for cracking jokes at all hours of every day, but Pullman acknowledged that \u201cit\u2019s true,\u201d and explained why: \u201cHe really crafted the part, and he imagined he was going to get a big box office draw at the time, and I think he was hurt that they didn\u2019t take him up on it, you know?\u201d<\/p>\n When that happened, the director opted for an unknown: \u201cThen he said, \u2018Heck, I\u2019ll get somebody nobody knows!\u2019 And I got a chance to do it. If there was a downside for Pullman, it\u2019s that the addition of more established comics, including John Candy and Rick Moranis, meant his character didn\u2019t get any of the best lines. Candy tried to give him one, though, only for Brooks to tell the actor in no uncertain terms that he wasn\u2019t funny enough<\/a> to be saying them, which must have stung a little.<\/p>\n They may not have been A-listers at the time, but it\u2019s nonetheless fascinating to think about how Hanks\u2019 or Cruise\u2019s careers could have turned out had they opted to appear in Spaceballs, especially when they ended up headlining Big and Rain Man the following year, respectively.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Related Topics<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Credits: Far Out \/ Raph_PH) Tue 30 September 2025 19:15, UK Even though Penny Marshall\u2019s Big had earned…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":172850,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[2973,96,2839,25685,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-172849","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-comedy","tag-entertainment","tag-movies","tag-tom-hanks","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172849","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=172849"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172849\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/172850"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=172849"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=172849"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=172849"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}