Tom Hanks’ Daughter Opens Up About Her Struggles with Her Mother in Candid Book

Elizabeth Anne Hanks, daughter of Tom Hanks and his first wife, Samantha Lewes, shares an intimate look at her turbulent upbringing and complicated bond with her mother in her upcoming book, The 10: A Memoir of Family and the Open Road.

In an excerpt obtained by People, Hanks—who now writes under the name E.A. Hanks—reflects on how her parents' divorce in 1985 shaped her and her brother Colin’s early years.

“I am a kid from the First (non-famous) Marriage,” she writes. “My only memories of my parents together are from Colin’s high school graduation and then my own.” She describes a lone photograph of herself standing between them, noting her mother’s wig slightly askew.

Born in Burbank, Hanks recalls having “few memories of the early years in Los Angeles” after her mother abruptly relocated them to Sacramento, six hours away, following the divorce. While a custody agreement allowed for visits with her father and stepmother on weekends and summers, she describes her years from age five to fourteen as “filled with confusion, violence, deprivation, and love.”

“I lived in a white house with columns, a backyard with a pool, and a bedroom covered in pictures of horses,” she recalls. But as time passed, her mother’s mental health declined.

“The backyard became so full of dog s**t that you couldn’t walk around it. The house reeked of smoke. The fridge was often empty or stocked with expired food, and my mother spent more and more time in her four-poster bed, absorbed in the Bible,” she writes.

One night, she recounts, emotional abuse escalated into physical violence. In the aftermath, she moved to Los Angeles in the middle of seventh grade. At that point, her parents’ custody arrangement essentially reversed, with her primary residence shifting to her father’s home.

At 14, she and her mother embarked on a road trip across the U.S. via Interstate 10, traveling in a Winnebago to Florida. But by her senior year of high school, everything changed.

“She called to say she was dying,” the excerpt ends.

Samantha Lewes—whose birth name was Susan Dillingham—passed away from lung cancer in 2002 at age 49, leaving Hanks, then 19, to grapple with the loss.

In 2019, Hanks retraced her mother’s journey, setting out on a six-month road trip from Los Angeles to Palatka, Florida, where Lewes once lived. That journey became the foundation for her memoir.

Speaking to People, she shares her belief that Lewes suffered from undiagnosed bipolar disorder, often experiencing extreme paranoia and delusions.

Lewes met Tom Hanks in the mid-’70s while studying theatre in Sacramento. The couple welcomed their first child, Colin, in 1977 and married the following year. In 1982, Elizabeth was born.

Their marriage ended in 1985, and their divorce was finalized two years later. Initially, Lewes had primary custody, with weekend and summer visits at their father’s home. But as the children grew older, the arrangement reversed.

While Lewes never remarried, Tom Hanks wed actress Rita Wilson in 1988. The couple shares two sons, Chet and Truman.

The 10: A Memoir of Family and the Open Road by E.A. Hanks will be released on April 8.