Liv Bridge
Tom Hanks' daughter E.A. Hanks made a raft of allegations relating to childhood 'violence' in her new memoir which her famous father has since addressed.
In April this year, E.A. (real name Elizabeth Anne) dropped her bombshell book, The 10: A Memoir of Family And The Open Road.
The 43-year-old is the veteran Hollywood actor's only daughter whom he shared with his late ex wife, Susan Dillingham, who went by the stage name Samantha Lewes.
The pair also welcomed a son, Colin Hanks, now 47, before their bitter divorce came after five years of marriage in 1987.
Advert
Lewes tragically died of lung cancer at the age of 49 in 2002 and Hanks married Rita Wilson and welcomed two sons, Chet, 34, and Truman, 29.
However, E.A. has revealed her childhood was very different to that of her half-siblings as her memoir makes for a hard-hitting read into the Hanks' unusual family dynamic, marred by what she infers is her late mom's undiagnosed mental health issues.
Among the allegations, she said her mom was awarded primary custody of her and Colin but visited her father frequently enough - until it stopped.
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. went on to reveal her mom had up and moved the children from Los Angeles to Sacramento without any warning to Hanks.
“My dad came to pick us up from school and we’re not there,” she recalled as per PEOPLE. “And it turns out we haven't been there for two weeks and he has to track us down."
E.A. penned: "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."
Then, she said the 'emotional violence became physical violence' and, 'right smack in the middle of seventh grade' the custody agreement switched and she moved back to L.A.
The Forrest Gump actor has since addressed the claims made in the book for the first time while on the red carpet for his latest Wes Anderson movie, The Phoenician Scheme.
The 68-year-old said about the memoir: "It’s a pride because, I think, she shares it with me, she’s been very open about what the process is."
He 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 gushed: "She’s a knockout, always has been."
As for the inspiration behind her jaw-dropping memoir, E.A. says she was inspired by a six-month trip she took in 2019 inspired by the same journey she had taken with her mom years before.
“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.”