Every Movie Role Tom Hanks Turned Down!

Tom Hanks is one of the few people on planet earth who can honestly get away with the excuse of being "too busy" to sign on for a particular project. I mean, just look at the amount of films he had under his belt by the time he decided to branch out into directing in 1996.

However, when Hanks fell back on this reasoning when backing out of Mike Nichols' Primary Colors, the press didn't buy it and felt this decision was actually made due to his friendship with President Bill Clinton. The film was an adaptation of the novel Primary Colors: A Novel of Politics which itself was a fictional story inspired by Clinton's first presidential campaign in 1992.

Yet, Hanks still stuck to his story and simply confessed that he told Nichols, "life has caught up with me" after staring at his schedule and realising he was due to shoot Saving Private Ryan and executive-produce the series From the Moon to the Earth on HBO. He also noted that his appearance in the film would not have offended Clinton, with the actor stating:

”I was at an event with him recently. He joked, ‘It’s okay with me if you do Primary Colors.’ I laughed harder than anybody else did.”

John Travolta went on to star as Jack Stanton instead, with his Clinton-esque performance earning him plenty of plaudits once the feature landed on the big screen.