Xtreme Vogue London Desk: Sarah Marshal
Tom Hanks is often referred to as “America’s dad,” but when it comes to his actual children, the Oscar winner is defending them in the ongoing nepotism-baby discourse stoked by a recent New York magazine cover.
In his newly released film, A Man Called Otto, Hanks stars with his youngest son, Truman, who plays a younger version of his father’s character. Rita Wilson, Hanks’s wife and Truman’s mother, both produced the film and performed an original song for it. Hanks told Reuters (via The Sun) in a recent interview that all four of his children are “very creative” and “involved in some brand of storytelling.”
The actor has two children with his late first wife, Samantha Lewes—Colin, who has starred in series including Fargo and A Friend of the Family, and Elizabeth. He and Wilson are also parents to Chet, an occasional actor and aspiring rapper who controversially promoted “White Boy Summer” in 2021 and previously said he “didn’t have a strong male role model” to advise him on growing up Hanks.
“Look, this is the family business. This is what we’ve been doing forever. It’s what all of our kids grew up in,” Hanks told Reuters of his showbiz family. “If we were a plumbing supply business or if we ran the florist shop down the street, the whole family would be putting in time at some point, even if it was just, you know, inventory at the end of the year.”
He continued: “The thing that doesn’t change, no matter what happens, no matter what your last name is, is whether it works or not. I mean, that’s the issue anytime any of us go off and try to tell a fresh story or create something that has a beginning and a middle and an end. Doesn’t matter what our last names are. We have to do the work in order to make that a true and authentic experience for the audience.” Hanks definitively added, “That’s a much bigger task than worrying about whether anybody’s going to, like, try to scathe us or not.”
