Tom Hanks’ daughter, Elizabeth Anne (E.A.) Hanks, has released a memoir that includes several claims about her childhood experiences, including accounts of ‘violence.’ Her famous father, Tom Hanks, has since addressed these allegations.
Earlier this year, E.A. published her book, “The 10: A Memoir of Family And The Open Road,” in April. At 43, she is the only daughter of the esteemed Hollywood actor, whom he had with his late ex-wife, Susan Dillingham, also known by her stage name, Samantha Lewes.
The couple also had a son, Colin Hanks, who is now 47. Their marriage ended in a difficult divorce after five years in 1987. Lewes sadly passed away from lung cancer at the age of 49 in 2002. Tom Hanks later married Rita Wilson, with whom he has two sons, Chet, 34, and Truman, 29.
E.A.’s memoir reveals a stark contrast between her childhood and that of her half-siblings. The book provides a candid look into the complexities of the Hanks family dynamic, which E.A. suggests were impacted by her late mother’s undiagnosed mental health issues.
Among the claims, E.A. mentions that her mother was given primary custody of her and her brother Colin but that they still visited their father regularly—until those visits ceased.
She wrote, “Eventually a divorce agreement was settled, and I would visit my dad and stepmother (and soon enough my younger half brothers) on the weekends and during summers, but from 5 to 14, years filled with confusion, violence, deprivation, and love, I was a Sacramento girl.”
E.A. also shared an event where her mother moved them from Los Angeles to Sacramento without informing Hanks. “My dad came to pick us up from school and we’re not there,” she recalled, according to PEOPLE. “And it turns out we haven’t been there for two weeks and he has to track us down.”
E.A. described her living situation: “I lived in a white house with columns, a backyard with a pool, and a bedroom with pictures of horses plastered on every wall. As the years went on, the backyard became so full of dog sh*t that you couldn’t walk around it, the house stank of smoke. The fridge was bare or full of expired food more often than not, and my mother spent more and more time in her big four-poster bed, poring over the Bible.”
She noted that ’emotional violence became physical violence,’ and the custody arrangement was eventually changed, leading her to move back to Los Angeles during her seventh grade.
On the red carpet for his latest film, The Phoenician Scheme, Tom Hanks addressed the memoir’s claims for the first time. The 68-year-old actor expressed pride in his daughter’s work: “It’s a pride because, I think, she shares it with me, she’s been very open about what the process is.”
Hanks continued, “I’m not surprised that my daughter had the wherewithal, as well as the curiosity, as well as, I’m going to say, perhaps, the shoot herself in the foot, wherewithal, in order to examine this thing that she was incredibly honest about. We all come from checkered, cracked lives, all of us, despite the fact that part of it would seem as though, she would work for some international well-known firm with a copyrighted last name. She knows that and she leads into absolutely everything of it and I think anyone who does that is a bold journalistic literary mind and I’m thrilled I can say the same thing about my daughter.”
Hanks also praised his daughter, saying, “She’s a knockout, always has been.”
E.A.’s motivation for her memoir came from a six-month journey she embarked on in 2019, which mirrored a trip she had taken with her mother years earlier. “When I was 14, my mother and I drove across America along Interstate 10 to Florida,” she explained, “in a Winnebago that lumbered along the asphalt with a rolling gait that felt nautical.”