Elizabeth Hanks, the daughter of Tom Hanks and first wife Samantha Lewes, opened up about her turbulent childhood and complex relationship with her mother in her new book, “The 10: A Memoir of Family And The Open Road.”
In an excerpt obtained by People Thursday, the author — who now goes by E.A. for Elizabeth Anne — wrote about how her parents’ split in 1985 shaped her and brother Colin Hanks’ early years.
“I am a kid from the First (non-famous) Marriage. My only memories of my parents in the same place at the same time are Colin’s high school graduation, then my high school graduation,” she began. “I have one picture of me standing between my parents. In it, my mother’s best wig is slightly askew.”
The author, now 42, was “born in Burbank” but has very “few memories of the early years in Los Angeles” because her mom moved them, without warning, six hours away to Sacramento shortly after her divorce from the “Forrest Gump” star.
“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,” she wrote, per People.
“I lived in a white house with columns, a backyard with a pool, and a bedroom with pictures of horses plastered on every wall.”
However, things took a turn “as the years went on” and her mom’s mental health suffered.
“The backyard became so full of dog s—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 recalled in the excerpt.
“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.”
The Vassar College graduate said her parents’ “custody arrangement basically switched” after that point and she found herself only visiting Sacramento “on the weekends and in the summer.”
“When I was 14, my mother and I drove across America along Interstate 10 to Florida, in a Winnebago that lumbered along the asphalt with a rolling gait that felt nautical,” she continued.
“My senior year of high school, she called to say she was dying,” the excerpt ended.
Lewes, whose real name was Susan Dillingham, died from lung cancer in 2002 at age 49. E.A. was just 19 at the time.
In 2019, E.A. went on another six-month road trip from Los Angeles to Palatka, Fla., where Lewes once lived, via Interstate 10.
She set out on the journey to learn more about her mom and wrote the upcoming memoir about her experiences along the way.
E.A. told People she suspected that Lewes lived with undiagnosed bipolar disorder with episodes of extreme paranoia and delusion.
Lewes met the “Cast Away” actor, 68, in the mid-’70s while they were both studying theater in Sacramento.
The then-couple welcomed their first child, son Colin, 47, in 1977 and tied the knot one year later. They became parents of two in 1982 when Elizabeth was born. However, the bliss was short-lived and the pair separated in 1985. Their divorce was finalized two years later. Lewes got primary custody in the divorce and the kids had designated weekend and summer visits with their dad — until the situation flipped in their teenage years. While Lewes never remarried, Tom went on to marry actress Rita Wilson in 1988. They share sons Chet, 34, and Truman, 29. “The 10: A Memoir of Family and the Open Road” by E.A. Hanks is out April 8.
