When Tom Hanks accepted his Cecil B. DeMille Award at this year’s Golden Globes, he spoke about “five kids who are braver and stronger and wiser than their old man is.”
But Hanks only has four children: Colin, Elizabeth, Chet and Truman.
Colin and Elizabeth were born to Hanks’ first wife actress Samantha Lewes. Chet and Truman were born after his second marriage to wife of 31 years, Rita Wilson.
Tom Hanks accepts the Cecil B. Demille Award at the 2020 Golden Globes. Post continues below video.
The fifth child he referred to was reportedly Samantha Bryant, his daughter-in-law who has been married to his eldest son Colin since 2010. Hanks sees her ‘like a daughter’.
“I’m sorry,” he said after getting teary, taking a moment to gather his emotions.
“A man is blessed with a family sitting down front like that. A wife who is fantastic in every way, who has taught me what love is. Five kids who are braver and stronger and wiser than their old man is.”
In a November 2019 interview with the New York Times, Hanks said his children with his first wife grew up with a different version of ‘dad’ than his two younger children with Wilson.
“My son Colin was born when I was very young. As well as my daughter, but that means we have this gestalt understanding because they remember when their dad was just a guy trying to, you know, make the rent. My other kids, they were born after I had established a beachhead in every way. And so their lives were just different.”
Parenting is not easy, he said. But his love for his children knows no bounds: “The only thing really, I think, eventually a parent can do is say I love you, there’s nothing you can do wrong, you cannot hurt my feelings, I hope you will forgive me on occasion, and what do you need me to do? You offer up that to them. I will do anything I can possibly do in order to keep you safe.”
