How Getting Married Twice Saved Tom Hanks

Highlights

Hanks’ childhood upbringing led to loneliness and self-destructive behaviors in his early 20s.
Marrying Samantha Lewes to ease loneliness didn’t work out, leading to divorce in 1987.
Meeting Rita Wilson was a life-changing event for Hanks, alleviating his loneliness and bringing happiness.

Tom Hanks is among the few actors with a clean reputation in Hollywood. Perhaps the only smear on his image is his controversial son Chet. But life hasn’t always been a success for the Forrest Gump star. As a child, Hanks’ blended family moved to 10 different houses. He called it a “vagabond” childhood that made him lonely and self-destructive in his early 20s.

That void was one of the reasons he married Samantha Lewes in 1978. Unfortunately, it was never filled until Hanks, who almost died while filming Cast Away, married Rita Wilson a decade later. Even then, the two-time Oscar winner confessed to making “mistakes” with his children when they were growing up. Here’s how Hanks’ marriages changed his life for the better.

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Tom Hanks Said He Married His First Wife Samantha Lewes To “Quell Loneliness”

In 2016, Hanks opened up about the “loneliness” that led him to his first marriage. He began by remembering how his childhood influenced his pursuit of acting. “This was the ‘wow’ moment of my life going from a kid trying to figure out what’s interesting in this life to young man yearning to be an artist,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Desert Discs. “I started asking myself: ‘How do I find the vocabulary for what’s rattling around in my head?’

As it turned out, Hanks was searching for “the vocabulary of loneliness”.

In 1978, Hanks married Lewes to “quell loneliness”, which they both felt at that time. But like any band-aid fix, it never worked, leading to their divorce in 1987. In 2023, Wilson revealed the actor was so “happy” following his divorce that he turned down When Harry Met Sally, which starred Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal in 1989.

“He could not understand that a person going through a divorce would have anything other than just like, ‘I’m so happy’,”
she told iHeartPodcast,
Table for Two with Bruce Bozzi
.

Despite his post-divorce bliss, Hanks felt guilty leaving Lewes. “I was just too young and insecure for marriage,” he told Express in 2013. “I was not really ready to take on those responsibilities.” His other concern was that he was “abandoning” their children, Colin and Elizabeth, as someone who also grew up with parents who divorced when he was around four-years-old.

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Being A Father At 21 Ended Tom Hanks’ Self-Destructive “Party Boy” Phase

Being A Father At 21 Ended Tom Hanks' Lonely "Party Boy" Phase — via Instar

In 1977, Hanks and Lewes welcomed their first child, Colin. The Sully star was only 21 years old. While many regret having a kid that early in life, Hanks said “having a kid at 21 was the greatest thing that ever happened to me.” As it turned out, being a young father saved him from his self-destructive habits as a “party boy”.

“Because I didn’t smoke pot,” Hanks said of how fatherhood improved his life. “I didn’t do drugs, I was not a party boy.” In 1989, the Elvis alum candidly talked about his history with drugs during a Playboy interview.

“As to drugs, there isn’t
anybody
who didn’t smoke pot,” Hanks told the magazine. “And I also had done some blow. But I never did LSD. I never even did Quaaludes or anything like that, though all of this stuff, especially for someone who worked in the theater, was abundant. Smoking pot just made me the stupidest human being in the world.”

Unfortunately, Hanks wasn’t the perfect father to his kids despite laying off drugs. “I start thinking about mistakes I made with my own kids and not explaining things or not being there for them,” he told The New York Times in 2019. “Or being so preoccupied with other things that are going on in our adult world.” He then described how he was two different fathers to his eldest and youngest kids.

“My son Colin was born when I was very young,” Hanks shared. “As well as my daughter, but that means we have this gestalt understanding because they remember when their dad was just a guy trying to, you know, make the rent. My other kids, they were born after I had established a beachhead in every way. And so their lives were just different.”

All Of Tom Hanks’ Children And What They Do For A Living

Colin Lewes Hanks	Actor	Best known for his TV roles in Roswell (1999-2001), Fargo (2014-2015), Life in Pieces (2015-2019); as well as his movie roles in King Kong (2005) and The House Bunny (2008)
Elizabeth Ann Hanks	Writer	Published in TIME magazine, The Guardian, The New York Times, and Huffington Post; Set to publish his first novel in 2024
Chester “Chet” Marlon Hanks	Musician, Reality Star	Infamous White Boy Summer hitmaker; recently joined MTV’s The Surreal Life
Truman Theodore Hanks	Actor, Cinematographer	Played the younger version of his dad on Netflix‘s A Man Called Otto (2022); part of the production team behind West Side Story (2021), Black Widow (2021) and Atypical (2017);

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Tom Hanks Knew Marrying Rita Wilson Meant He’d “Never Be Lonely Anymore”

Hanks eventually got his happy ending when he met Wilson, whom he married in 1988. “You end up meeting that other person that you’re like, ‘She gets it’,” the Finch star said of his second wife. At that time, he thought: “I don’t think I’ll ever be lonely anymore, that’s how I felt when I met my wife.” Here’s a brief timeline of their love story:

1981: Hanks and Wilson met on the set of ABC’s sitcom Bosom Buddies
1985: They starred in their first film together, Volunteers
1986: The couple made their red carpet debut as a couple
1988: They got married
1990: Their first child together, Chet was born
1993: They starred in another movie together, Sleepless in Seattle
1995: They welcomed their second son, Truman

In 2012, Wilson told Piers Morgan about a cute moment where Hanks told her, “You never have to change anything about who you are in order to be with me.” She described it as “a wave of — if love is a feeling, or a cellular thing that happens to your body — it went through me, and that’s pretty much who he is, and how he’s been.”

While the couple are done with their parenting years, they’re still working on being good grandparents. In 2022, Colin told TODAY with Hoda & Jenna that Hanks and Wilson are just “okay” grandparents. “They’re okay, yeah,” he laughingly said, adding, “It would be great if they paid attention to the kid’s bedtime and actually cooked food that the kids will eat. No, they’re fine. They’re great.” Tom Hanks has three grandchildren: Colin’s two daughters, Olivia and Charlotte, and Chet’s daughter, Michaiah.