Tom Hanks’ Daughter E.A. Hanks Talks Relationship With Stepmother Rita Wilson

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Tom Hanks’ daughter, E.A. Hanks, has opened up about her difficult childhood with Tom’s ex-wife, the late Samantha Lewes — and how tight-knit she and her siblings became as part of the blended family Tom created with his second wife, Rita Wilson.

E.A., 42, has three brothers: older brother Colin, 47, also from Tom’s first marriage; and Tom and Rita’s sons Chet, 34, and Truman, 29. Tom and Rita married in April 1988.

“My younger brothers, I don’t think I’ve ever really referred to them as my half-brothers, which I guess they technically are,” E.A. told People in an interview published Tuesday, April 8, the day the book hit shelves. “Because Chester was 5 when I moved to Los Angeles and Truman had just been born … So neither of them remember a time when I didn’t live with them.”

“We’re all kind of in that era of trying to get our own thing going and individuate and all of that,” she continued. “But we’re a posse.”

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In her new memoir, The 10, E.A. — a contributor for The New York Times and Vanity Fair — revealed that her biological mother, whose real last name was Dillingham, initially got primary custody of E.A. (short for Elizabeth Anne) and Colin. The three of them left Los Angeles for Sacramento, the six-hour drive eventually dictating that she saw Tom and Rita, both 68, and their boys only on weekends and during summer.

“From 5 to 14, years filled with confusion, violence, deprivation, and love,” she wrote, per People, “I was a Sacramento girl.”
The author explained her childhood confusion: “I lived in a white house with columns, a backyard with a pool, and a bedroom with pictures of horses plastered on every wall,” but her mother’s mental health began to decline.

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“The backyard became so full of dog s—t that you couldn’t walk around it, the house stank of smoke,” E.A. wrote. “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.”

Then Mom’s behavior took a darker turn.

“One night, her emotional violence became physical violence, and in the aftermath, I moved to Los Angeles, right smack in the middle of the seventh grade,” she wrote. There, Lewes “pushed me, shook me, pulled at my hair and locked me in a closet once or twice … there were men hiding in her closet who were waiting for us to go to sleep to come out and do horrible things.”

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E.A. then began living full-time with Tom and Wilson, both 68, but still regularly visited Sacramento. During her senior year of high school, her biological mother told her that she was dying. Lewes passed away from lung cancer in 2002 at age 49.

Through it all, E.A. says that Tom and Rita were the stable parents she needed.

“Rita’s not really a stepmother, she’s my other mother,” E.A. told People. “When I say my parents, I really mean my dad and Rita.”