Tom Hanks: I Voted for First Time on 'American Idol'

USMagazine, Tuesday, May 24, 2011, 7:23am (PDT)

Forget "American Idol" finalists Lauren Alaina and Scotty McCreery.

If you ask Tom Hanks, Haley Reinhart should have been season 10's champ. In fact, Hanks was so confident in the 20-year-old's abilities that he voted for her during last week's top 3 round -- his first vote in Idol history.

"I had dodged the virus for many, many years," Hanks, 54, told Ellen DeGeneres about making Idol appointment television. "This year I got hooked on watching with [wife] Rita [Wilson]." So hooked, he says, that he dialed in for Reinhart, who got the boot after a record 95 million votes were cast.

"I voted twice and I thought well, that'll put her over the top," the Larry Crowne star told DeGeneres in an interview airing on her talk show Tuesday. "I put off [voting] as long as I could. I haven't voted with Dancing With the Stars yet."

The Reinhart loyalist also offered a few words on finalists Alaina and McCreery. "Not to take anything away from them but I do hate them," he joked. "I'm joking. I don't hate them. I just lost, that's all."

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