It seems like being the child of an incredibly famous person might not be as great as we think. Sure, you have an abundance of wealth. The world is really your oyster, no poverty to hold you back in growth. However, it also seems like your parent might not always be around. The increasing demands of their career might cause a strain in the family. This seems to be the case for Tom Hanks' daughter E.A., who recalls a pretty turbulent childhood despite having a famous actor for a dad.
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Recently, E.A. released their new memoir The 10: A Memoir of Family And The Open Road. PEOPLE magazine captures an excerpt detailing the divorce between Hanks and her mom in 1985. Moreover, she hones in on how this disconnect ends up affecting the whole family dynamic, particularly with herself and her brother Colin. "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," E.A says. "I have one picture of me standing between my parents. In it, my mother's best wig is slightly askew."
Tom Hanks' Daughter Details Family Turbulence After Divorce
E.A.'s early years were initially spent in Burbank, California before migrating to Sacramento. She would spend summers and weekends with her dad and her stepmother and life seemed fine enough for a while. However, time passes and her mother's mental health deteriorates significantly. "I lived in a white house with columns, a backyard with a pool, and a bedroom with pictures of horses plastered on every wall. The backyard became so full of dog s—t that you couldn't walk around it, the house stank of smoke," Hanks details.
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," E.A. Hanks recalls further. "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."
By that point, E.A. switches households, only seeing her mother on weekends and summers this time. By senior year, tragedy strikes when her mother tells Hanks that she's dying of lung cancer. Eventually, she passed at 49 years old and E.A. was only 19 years old.
