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Before he knew life was “like a box of chocolates,” Tom Hanks’ life was filled with canned tomato soup, burned on the top of a stove.
After his parents split when he was only five, Hanks followed his roving dad, who moved him and his siblings around, wherever he found work.
With little parental supervision, Hanks–now one of Hollywood’s most prolific actors–raised himself, foraging for food in the small apartment where he lived with his big brother and sister, oftentimes feeling “lonely.”
Today, though he lived in 10 different homes before he was 10, the actor speaks fondly of his childhood, saying the experience of being alone was priceless in achieving his success.
Born in 1956, Tom Hanks had several TV appearances before he became a household name as the lucky man who catches a beautiful mermaid, played by Daryl Hannah in 1984’s romantic comedy, Splash.
That was just the beginning of his ascent. He then starred in the hit comedy film Big, a performance that earned him his first Academy nomination, which was followed by back-to-back wins in 1993 and 1994 with Philadelphia and Forrest Gump.
As of Hollywood’s most popular faces, it’s hard to believe that as a youngster, the actor, who voiced Woody in Toy Story, was unpopular in school with both students and teachers.
“A geek, a spaz. I was horribly, painfully, terribly shy,” Hanks shared with Rolling Stone. “At the same time, I was the guy who’d yell out funny captions during filmstrips. But I didn’t get into trouble. I was always a real good kid and pretty responsible.”
Learning responsibility couldn’t have been easy for a child who grew up without a fully present adult.
After an almost 11-year marriage, his parents divorced when he was five and he, along with his older sister (Sandra), and brother (Larry), moved out with their father, Amos. His younger brother Jim stayed with his mother, Janet, a hospital worker who was unable to support all four kids on her own.
Janet remarried three times and Amos, a bit of a nomad, remarried twice, constantly uprooting the kids to new homes across California.
“I moved about a million times. I think we moved every six months of my life.” Hanks explained, crediting the instability for priming his future career in Hollywood. “It made me flexible…It gave me confidence to think I can be in any sort of social situation and know how to gracefully get out of it.”
Still, being a child, alone at home with other children, had many challenges, like learning about dental hygiene at school because, “no one told me how to brush my teeth.”
Speaking candidly in September 2020 on the In Depth with Graham Bensinger podcast, the Apollo 13 star joked that he had the freedom to drink all the milk he wanted from the fridge. He adds, “Maybe there was a degree of loneliness […] I kind of fell through the cracks, I was not abused…and didn’t really have adults per se that were taking care of me.”
Reflecting on his childhood, the Sleepless in Seattle star shared that him and his siblings would tell time from what was playing on television and that he started seeing movies at the theatre, alone, when he was very young.
Hanks, who said “I mostly just wanted to get out of the house,” was trying to find his place with various extracurricular activities like track, soccer, and even a church youth group.
Then, while watching a friend play Dracula in the school play, he realized that acting was the path he needed to follow: “Up until then I’d had no clue that acting was ever an option.”
Taking drama classes and auditioning for school plays, the star of Saving Private Ryan said, “[I] had more fun than I could possibly imagine.”
While studying theatre in college, Hanks, who admits he did some “idiotic stuff,” was very disciplined, and didn’t do drugs, hardly drank, and was in bed by 10:10 pm.
His hard work paid off when he landed his first role in the low-budget slasher film, He Knows your Alone, followed by a starring role in 1982’s TV film Mazes and Monsters and a leading role in the TV series Bosom Buddies, which ran over two seasons from 1980 to 1982.
Today, he is an internationally renowned actor and filmmaker, with a flawless reputation for being a “nice guy.”
Except for that one time a fan almost knocked over his wife, Rita Wilson, and even then, his gallantry is to be commended.