Tom Hanks has good timing to thank for landing Julia Roberts for his new movie Larry Crowne, because she read the script while she was still in creative mode shooting Eat Pray Love.
Hanks co-wrote, directed and produced the upcoming comedy/drama, about a middle-aged man who goes back to school after losing his job, and stars alongside his Hollywood pal Roberts and his real-life wife Rita Wilson.
But Roberts admits she would have passed on the role as a boozy teacher altogether if Hanks had waited a few weeks to propose the project. She tells Oprah Winfrey, “I had just arrived in Rome beginning Eat Pray Love... and I get this email (from Hanks) that says, ’This is just business, if you don’t like it, we’re still buddies, have a look and tell me what you think.’
“Now, had he sent this four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10 weeks later, I would have said, ’No, I’m too tired’, but I was all fresh with how creative and fabulous it was to make a movie and I read it and it was so winning and funny and the idea of being an alcoholic school teacher at junior college was just too good to be true.”The close friends have previously worked together on 2007’s Charlie Wilson’s War.