Tom Hanks has finally broken his silence on daughter E.A. Hanks’ bombshell memoir about her troubled childhood.
The “Forrest Gump” actor, 68, opened up about the book, titled “The 10: A Memoir of Family and the Open Road,” for the first time during the red carpet premiere of his new film, “The Phoenician Scheme.”
“I’m not surprised that my daughter had the wherewithal as well as the curiosity to examine this thing that I think she was incredibly honest about,” Hanks told Access Hollywood on Wednesday, May 26. “We all come from checkered, cracked lives, all of us.”
“She’s a knockout, always has been,” he continued. “If you’ve had kids, you realize that you see who they are when they’re about 6 weeks old.”
“Their personality is on display right there,” the “Cast Away” actor added, “their temper, the way they see the world is demonstrated in their body language and on their face.”
E.A. Hanks, who the “Big” star shared with his late ex-wife Samantha Lewes, published her surprising memoir on April 8.
Short for Elizabeth Anne, E.A. opened up about her rocky early years and the “violence” and “deprivation” she experienced growing up as the only daughter of two Hollywood icons.
“I am a kid from the First (non-famous) Marriage,” Hanks’ 42-year-old daughter wrote in her memoir. “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.”
“I have one picture of me standing between my parents,” she added. “In it, my mother’s best wig is slightly askew.”
E.A.’s actress mother, whose real name was Susan Dillingham, passed away from lung cancer in 2002 at the age of 49.
Dillingham and Hanks had separated in 1985, at which point she took E.A. and E.A.’s brother, Colin Hanks, to live in Sacramento. The couple officially divorced in 1987.
Although E.A. and Colin initially lived with their mother, the “custody arrangement basically switched” after Dillingham allegedly began physically abusing her daughter.
“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,” Hanks’ daughter wrote.
“One night, her emotional violence became physical violence,” she claimed, “and in the aftermath I moved to Los Angeles, right smack in the middle of the seventh grade.”
As for the title of her bombshell memoir, E.A. revealed that it was inspired by the six-month transcontinental journey she took in 2019 following a similar trip with her mother along the same route 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.”
“The 10” also followed E.A. as she sought to learn more about her late mom’s complicated life.
