Every Movie Role Tom Hanks Turned Down!
12. Speed - Jack Traven
Tom Hanks has successfully lent himself to pretty much every genre imaginable over the years and, for the most part, he's excelled in all of them.
However, when it comes to straight-up thrill-a-minute action flicks, Hanks isn't usually the first name on a movie studio's lips. That still didn't stop director Jon de Bont considering the Oscar winner for the role of Officer Jack Traven in his intense 1994 feature about a bus set to blow up should its speed drop below 50mph.
Yet again, though, the Toms (Cruise and Hanks) turned down the role, paving the way for Keanu Reeves, of Point Break and the Bill & Ted fame at this point in time, to tackle the armed bus instead. This bona fide action thriller helped further establish Reeves as a reliable leading man, with the actor later going on to star in The Matrix series before eventually kicking all the ass as John Wick in the mid 2010's.
Hanks, on the other hand, still hasn't fully embraced the popcorn action-packed spectacular, with his closest forays into that world consisting of various, albeit hugely successful, war epics and the likes of The Di Vinci Code and its two sequels.