TW: Mentions of abuse and murder
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Tom Hanks is a celebrated actor and happily married to Rita Wilson. They have two sons, and Tom Hanks also has two children from his first marriage. One of them, his daughter Elizabeth Anne, is now publishing a book in which the 43-year-old reveals details of her terrible childhood.
Tom Hanks was married once before marrying Rita
The Forrest Gump actor has been married to Rita Wilson since 1988. The two are happy together and have started a family - they have two sons together. However, it was not Tom Hanks' first marriage.
He was previously married to Samantha Lewes, born Susan Dillingham, from 1978 up until 1987, and the couple welcomed two children together: a son and a daughter. After the divorce, the two stayed with their mother. But this had dire consequences, especially for daughter Elizabeth Anne (EA).
His daughter now talks about her terrible childhood
The 43-year-old now reveals this in her forthcoming book The 10: A Memoir of Family and the Open Road. In it, she describes how her mentally ill mother has changed over the years - and how this has affected her own development.
In excerpts already available to People and others, Elizabeth Anne describes how her childhood and early life, which were characterised by deprivation, hunger and a longing for love. Her mother, who had been given primary custody, had become increasingly withdrawn - so that the children were mostly left to their own devices. She writes:
I am a kid from the First (non-famous) Marriage. [...] I was born in Burbank, but after my parents split up, my mother took my older brother and me to live in Sacramento.
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.
Things progressively deteriorated for the young girl, as her mother fell deeper into the claws of mental illness. She recounts what her life was like at the time:
As the years went on, the backyard became so full of dog s--- 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.
After a domestic incident during which her mother became violent, Elizabeth Anne moved in with her father in Los Angeles. She writes:
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.
Elizabeth Anne decided to dive into her family history
After her mother's outburst, she decided as a teenager to move in with her father, Tom Hanks, and his second wife. Custody was reversed, and she visited her mother during weekends or on holidays.
Years after her mother's death, EA found an old red diary and leafed through it. But the reading was disturbing. Samantha is said to have made notes in the little book about a terrible deed committed by her father: According to the notes, John Raymond Dillingham had raped and murdered a girl.
Despite intensive research, Elizabeth Anne was unable to determine whether this was the truth or a figment of her mother's imagination - but the reading had a lasting effect on her, which is why she approached her uncle about it:
He described a childhood where someone very easily could have fallen through the cracks. And the way he describes my mother is someone who is apart in some way and who’s been touched by something that she had no language for.
It’s entirely possible that what she was describing was an obliteration of her own girlhood. And that what she’s describing actually happened to her. That it felt like murder and being eaten up, and what she’s really describing is abuse at the hands of her father.
This article has been translated from Oh!MyMag DE.
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Sources used:
People: E.A. Hanks, Daughter of Tom Hanks, Writes About Childhood with Troubled Mom After Parents' Divorce in Exclusive Excerpt
People: E.A. Hanks, Tom Hanks' Daughter, Set Out to Learn If Her Maternal Grandfather Was a Murderer (Exclusive)
Bunte: "Jahre voller Gewalt"Tom Hanks' Tochter aus 1. Ehe über ihre traurige Kindheit
