How Tom Hanks went from ‘second-string’ mermaid film Splash to global superstar
- Fan favourite Splash turns 35 this weekend. The film boosted the name of Hanks, a fresh-faced 28-year-old TV star at the time
- Also starring Daryl Hannah, the film went on to receive an Oscar nomination for original screenplay
Even Tom Hanks had to earn his status as a beloved film icon. As a fresh-faced 28-year-old TV star, Hanks rode a fluke wave to leading-man movie stardom playing a regular guy in love with a mermaid in Splash, which turns 35 this weekend.
Hanks had some luck in his unlikely casting as Allen Bauer alongside Daryl Hannah’s mermaid Madison in the Ron Howard-directed 1984 comedy smash. But Hanks owned the role, showing comic chops and his signature attribute: utter relatability.
“Hanks was the endearing everyman in Splash – that’s what he projected,” says film historian Leonard Maltin. “He couldn’t have asked for a better vehicle that let him be funny, romantic and even heroic in a broadly popular mass-audience movie.”
Hanks’ fortune in landing the part after two seasons on the sitcom Bosom Buddies was aided by a rival mermaid film project that was set to star A-lister Warren Beatty.
The story featured Beatty as man charged with building a marina who falls in love with a mermaid whose rock home is endangered by the lucrative project. Beatty’s film was never made, but it still kept established Hollywood leading men away from Splash.