WHY HANKS TURNED DOWN `PRIMARY' ROLE.

Byline: Bernard Weinraub The New York Times

Why did Tom Hanks abruptly turn down the role of the president in the film version of ``Primary Colors''? For months, the Academy Award-winning actor had just about committed to making what is expected to be a high-profile and expensive film from the best-selling novel.

The book was based on the 1992 Clinton presidential campaign and rang true enough, at least in spots, that insiders assumed that only another insider could have written it.

Mike Nichols owns film rights to the novel and is to direct and produce, with a screenplay by Elaine May. Universal signed a multimillion-dollar deal with Nichols after the film had more or less been shopped around as a Nichols-Hanks project.

Hanks is in the top tier of movie stars, up there with Tom Cruise, Harrison Ford and Mel Gibson. He earns as much as $20 million a film. And perhaps more than any other star, Hanks carefully selects roles that are essentially the same.

A modern-day Henry Fonda or James Stewart, he plays utterly decent and humane all-Americans. Whether he portrays a lawyer stricken with AIDS, as in ``Philadelphia,'' or an astronaut in dire trouble, as in ``Apollo 13,'' Hanks is utterly likable.

So his inclination to play a Southern governor with a lecherous streak and slippery morals stirred plenty of attention. Emma Thompson was set to play the governor's super-ambitious wife. The notoriety of the book - the supposed insider who wrote it turned out to be the journalist Joe Klein, who only stopped denying his authorship under duress - and the Nichols-May pedigree had the studio talking about the film as its major release in the 1997 holiday season.

Hanks' final decision startled Nichols and the studio, although executives insisted that he was never really on board. By all accounts, Hanks had not read the first 60 pages of the script that had just been completed by May.

Hanks' friends say one reason he backed away from the role was that he was tired after directing his first film, ``That Thing You Do,'' to be released on Oct. 4. A more provocative reason cited is that Hanks has developed something of a friendship with President Clinton. Playing a character very unflatteringly based on Clinton, some Hanks friends say, would have made the actor uncomfortable.

A third reason is the most obvious one. The role was not in keeping with Hanks' good-guy image. After all, the last time he played an unscrupulous character was in 1990, in ``Bonfire of the Vanities.'' The film bombed.

In the meantime, the studio and Nichols are searching for a new president. Kevin Costner? Robert Redford? Jack Nicholson?