E.A. Hanks, daughter of actor Tom Hanks, known from his roles in Toy Story and Philadelphia. She emerged from a childhood that was both lucky and harrowing. Another writer’s daughter. Growing up, she was born into the worldwide celebrities—thanks to her world-famous pop. In parallel, she dealt with the reality of her mother’s addiction and mental health issues.
Hanks also had a small role in her dad’s legendary 1994 movie “Forrest Gump.” This ambitious and visionary project later won Tom Hanks his second successive Academy Award. She visited Los Angeles and different film sets every weekend and school holiday with her father. The majority of her early years played out in Sacramento, where her mother, a fledgling actress who already changed her stage name from Susan to Samantha, raised her.
Reading the timeline of Hanks’ early life, it is hard to overstate the dramatic displacement. Her parents separated when she was about five years old. Due to this, Susan Lewes relocated to Sacramento along with her older sibling, Colin. Even through all of these difficulties, E.A. recalls the times her mother was caring and affectionate. She recounts her mother exposing her to classical music at a young age. Those groundbreaking films and literature influenced her developing understanding of art in a formative way.
Yet at the same time, E.A. understands that her mother’s addiction and mental health issues have had a harmful effect on E.A.’s own dreams. Susan Lewes struggled with cocaine addiction and showed signs of mental illness that E.A. believes was possibly bipolar disorder. They have continued to affect her case, E.A. understands, creating instability that, she feels, “obliterated” her opportunities for an artistic career.
Here, E.A. reflects on her complex relationship with her mother. It’s a lifetime on very thin ice,” she said, underscoring the notion that every move she makes is risky. All it takes is one little ugh to go from a great day to a horrible day.
As she got older, Hanks became more and more aware that her mom was struggling with her mental health. She began to realize that her mother’s mental health was tenuous. Over time it maybe shifted from a place of deep concern into a place of just complete paranoia and delusion, she noted. This heady environment, combined with a tumultuous upbringing, led her to search for clarity through the written word.
In 1996, E.A. embarked on the journey of a lifetime with her mother. That journey ignited her passion for personal writing and propelled her to investigate the intersections of American politics, trauma and grief. When I was little, a bitty baby, I was blessed enough to create a language only our family could speak. I found this code with my mother, a woman battling addiction. That’s like the best thing about having her host all these 12 step meetings in our living room,” she said.
As an advocate, Hanks has used her writing to connect her individual experience to national issues. She has a strong belief that healing trauma is integral to being able to progress. She adds, “You cannot reconcile something like a civil war if we can’t even come to consensus about what the facts are. That’s why we’re still really fighting it.”
E.A. Hanks gets really real about the difficulties in growing up the daughter of an icon. She has all the shame for the people who get starstruck in front of her father. And in doing so, people lose sight of his personhood and his artistry,” she explained.
Growing up in a diverse family was complicated. Hanks has accepted and welcomed the struggles. She dedicates it to her younger half brother, Truman Theodore Hanks, and to her step mother, Rita Wilson. Both have had an uplifting influence on her young life.
Touching on changing family relationships, E.A. spoke about the never-ending evolution of accepting her mother’s legacy. “I’m still releasing her into the world, and I’m deliberating on what to keep,” she said.
Born and raised in Maine, E.A. Hanks comes by her specialty through all of these experiences, cultivating a distinctive voice that melds the personal and the societal. Her story is an example of amazing fortitude against all odds. She weaves in and out of the burdensome expectation of living up to other people’s stereotypes of her trauma.