Hanks: I’m ‘Lucky’ to play McAlary

Tom Hanks is finally ready to give his regards to Broadway. The Oscar winner hadn’t planned on a detour from Hollywood to the Great White Way — until he read good friend Nora Ephron’s play about Daily News columnist Mike McAlary.

“We were in London at the same time. I was promoting ‘Larry Crowne’ and she was over there for a reading of what became ‘Lucky Guy,’” Hanks tells The News.

“Lucky Guy” follows the tragic true story of McAlary, who won a 1998 Pulitzer Prize for breaking the story of Abner Louima’s abuse in police custody, and died of colon cancer just four months later at the age of 41.

Impressed by Ephron’s fledgling script, Hanks volunteered for a 29day workshop in New York directed by “Angels in America” Tony winner George C. Wolfe.

“When we were finished,” Hanks recalls, “I literally just said, ‘What’s the next step of this? Are you going to do more of it?’ And the question came back, ‘Would you like to do it?’

“I said, ‘I think this could be magnificent.’ Not knowing that Nora was going through the health crisis that she was.”

After Ephron, who directed Hanks in 1993’s “Sleepless in Seattle,” died in June from complications brought on by leukemia, the project gained new importance.

The production will begin previews at the Broadhurst Theatre on March 1.

Performing on Broadway has long been on the to-do list for an actor who trod the boards before breaking through on the early-’80s sitcom “Bosom Buddies.”

“It was always like an impossible dream to imagine,” says Hanks. “But quite frankly I was in my child-raising years and I live on the opposite coast. I was not in a position to say I’m going to put my family life on hold and go off and do this for six months to a year.

“Now all my kids are grown up and out of the house. So there you go: no reason not to.” Ethan Sacks