Tom Hanks Fights Back Tears While Honoring Nora Ephron At ‘Lucky Guy’ Opening Night Performance On Broadway

Tom Hanks fought back tears as he paid tribute to the late Nora Ephron on the opening night the Broadway adaptation of "Lucky Guy," a novel Ephron wrote before her death from cancer in 2012. Ephron originally planned to join Tom Hanks onstage for the curtain call, so instead he honored his late friend after the play's debut at Manhattan's Broadhurst Theater on Monday, April 1.

Hanks tried to hold back his tears as the audience gave him a standing ovation for playing the late New York Post and Daily News columnist Mike McAlary.

A photograph of Ephron was shown at the curtain call, and Hank said it was a difficult and emotional moment, since the late screenwriter had hoped to attend the plays opening night before her death.

Hanks told New York Post's Page Six, "That was a tough moment. We were going to do this, and Nora and (the play's director) George C. Wolfe were going to walk out onstage. I miss her. What more can you say?"

Ephron died in New York City last year at 71 after battling with Leukemia.

Hanks said, "Nora was just a magnificent hang... You could be working, and you could be talking about personal things, you could be on vacation and talking about cultural history, you could be having a very lazy breakfast and you would be talking about Saddam Hussein. Nora was...fascinated by everything. She was always doing things that were so interesting. She told me, 'Never turn down a front-row seat for human folly.'"

In the audience that night was Meg Ryan, who starred alongside Hanks in Ephron's Sleepless In Seattle and You've Got Mail. Also attending were Brian Williams, Barbara Walters, Sting and Lorne Michaels.