Tom Hanks’ Daughter Elizabeth Anne Details Her Turbulent Childhood in New Memoir: ‘Only Memories of My Parents…’

Tom Hanks' daughter, Elizabeth, opened up about her difficult childhood in her new memoir. Elizabeth Hanks, who now goes by EA or Elizabeth Anne, was born to the Forrest Gump actor and his first wife, Samantha Lewes.

In an excerpt obtained by People magazine, Anne detailed her and her brother Colin’s early years after their parents split in 1985. “My only memories of my parents being in the same place at the same time are Colin’s high school graduation, then my high school graduation,” she wrote.

She revealed that she has just one picture of herself standing between her parents. She recalled her mother abruptly moving them from Los Angeles to Sacramento “without warning” following the divorce from the actor.

After the divorce settlement, Elizabeth would visit her father and stepmother in LA during summer breaks. Soon enough, she began visiting her many younger half-siblings. But she admitted that her early years — from ages 5 to 14 — were filled with “confusion, violence, deprivation, and love.”

She enjoyed being a “Sacramento girl,” living in a house with columns and a backyard with a pool — until her mother’s health deteriorated and things took a turn for the worse. Elizabeth recalled that the backyard became full of “dog sh*t” and the house began to reek of smoke.

When her mother’s emotional abuse turned physical, the author decided to move out and relocate to Los Angeles in the middle of seventh grade. The Vassar College graduate revealed that, after that point, the custody arrangement “switched.”

In the aftermath, Sacramento became her weekend and summer getaway, while LA became her home. Her mother, Samantha Lewes — whose real name was Susan Dillingham — died of lung cancer in 2002, when Elizabeth was 19 years old.

Now, she’s on a journey to learn more about her mother and wrote her book The 10: A Memoir of Family and the Open Road along the way.

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