Tom Hanks daughter reveals her abusive childhood and how it still controls her life

Get the Full StoryWhen it comes to star kids, the perception is that they want for nothing, with the millions their parent s earn never letting them get a taste of what poverty feels like and being protected from the worst of the world out there. But that was not the childhood Tom Hanks daughter, Elizabeth Ann Hanks, had to live and survive. In her upcoming memoir, The 10: A Memoir of Family and the Open Road, E.A. Hanks, the former Vanity Fair scribe, shares heart-wrenching details about her life as a child. The exclusive look at certain portions of the book by Page Six and People paints a childhood rife with confusion, violence, deprivation, and love. Her mother, Samantha Lewes and Tom Hanks went their separate ways in 1987, after spending nine years together in which they welcomed E.A. and then her brother, Colin Hanks. The split only made Lewes struggles worse E.A. believes that even though her mother was never formally diagnosed, she had bipolar disorder. In the beginning, Lewes was not physically violent with E.A., she was even a mother whom Hanks daughter can fondly remember sometimes, like how she drove her all over California to horse shows at ungodly hours and even cut up cookie dough for my friends sleeping over and let me dye my hair every color I wanted. Instead, she was abusive in other ways. She pushed me, shook me, pulled at my hair and locked me in a closet once or twice she told me there were men hiding in her closet who were waiting for us to go to sleep to come out and do horrible things. Lewes didn t stop there. Instead of being the protector and guardian her daughter needed, they had a woman who talked about having miscarried dozens of babies and hinting that she would join them in eternal limbo. As the years progressed, life only went downhill for E.A. as the house became a landfill of garbage and bordered on being completely unhygienic. As the years went on, the backyard became so full of dog s 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. But what finally broke E.A. s willpower was her mother s emotional violence transitioning to physical violence one night, post which she moved to LA to live with her father and his second wife, Rita Wilson, at the age of 14 while she was in seventh grade. The abuse still dictates E.A. s life Even though her mother s presence in her life was majorly minimized, the impact of the years of abuse remained. In her memoir, E.A. reveals how she has difficulty prioritizing personal hygiene as when she was a child, she rarely had an adult telling me to brush my teeth, for example, let alone how or why I should. The same goes for keeping her home stocked with needed food essentials on a consistent basis she struggles to do it. She also developed excoriation disorder, where one compulsively picks at their skin something she still does, though I work hard not to. Initially, E.A. wanted to protect her mom and her secrets, which meant revealing to her father the hell her life had become. But now, she is not ashamed of her truth or fears telling it, thanks to Hanks support. I m equally my father s daughter because he taught me to tell the truth and move forward. E.A. s revelations clash with the silence of her brother, Colin, when it comes to sharing details of his childhood. The Fargo actor lived with his mother, unlike his sister, but he is yet to say anything that hints at an abusive childhood.

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