E.A. Hanks, daughter of actor Tom Hanks and his first wife, Susan Dillingham, is sharing painful details about her childhood in her new memoir, The 10: A Memoir of Family and the Open Road.
In the book, E.A.—short for Elizabeth Anne—writes about a six-month road trip she took in 2019, retracing a journey from Los Angeles to Palatka, Florida, where her late mother once lived.
Along the way, she reflects on her mother’s troubled past and their complicated relationship.
Dillingham, who acted under the name Samantha Lewes, died of lung cancer in 2002 at age 49. E.A., now 42, claims that during her childhood, her mother was physically abusive and neglectful toward her and her brother, actor Colin Hanks.
“I am a kid from the First (non-famous) Marriage,” she writes in an excerpt shared by People. “My only memories of my parents together are Colin’s high school graduation and mine.”
E.A. recalls living in Sacramento with her mother after her parents separated in 1985 and later divorced in 1987.
She and Colin would spend weekends and summers with their father, Tom Hanks, his second wife Rita Wilson, and their younger half-brothers, Chet and Truman.
But from ages 5 to 14, E.A. says she lived a life full of “confusion, violence, deprivation,” though she also mentions there was love.
She remembers living in a white house with a pool and horse posters in her bedroom — but over time, things got worse.
“The backyard became so full of dog s— you couldn’t walk in it,” she writes. “And the house stank of smoke.”
E.A.’s parents married in 1978 and split seven years later. Hanks later married Wilson in 1988, while Dillingham never remarried.
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