E.A. Hanks shares Tom Hanks’ response to her book on difficult childhood

Elizabeth Anne Hanks, the daughter of famous actor Tom Hanks, has recently released a memoir called The 10: A Memoir of Family and the Open Road. In it, she shares details about her difficult childhood, which she says was filled with abuse and neglect from her mother, Susan Dillingham.

The book analyzes Hanks’ early years, revealing a side of the Hanks family that was not widely known before. Per E Online, in the memoir, Hanks talks about her complicated relationship with her mother, saying she suffered emotional and physical abuse after her parents split up in the 1980s. The abuse got worse after Dillingham was given primary custody of Elizabeth Anne and her brother, Colin.

Hanks describes a childhood full of instability and hardship. She shares stories of emotional manipulation and control, as well as times when she was neglected—sometimes not having enough food or proper clothing. The book also includes accounts of physical violence, showing a pattern of aggressive behavior from her mother, even in public.

Tom Hanks is fine with daughter’s memoir

Despite the painful things revealed in the book, Tom Hanks has publicly supported his daughter, per Vanity Fair. He helped her during the writing process, giving advice and checking facts in the manuscript. His involvement shows how much he cares about his daughter’s well-being and his effort to come to terms with the family’s past.

She said, “From the outset, he has supported The 10, Whether it was swapping cars with me, helping me pick out camping gear, or being the first reader. The conversation we had once he had read a very early draft was exactly what I needed to hear, which was that I had depicted my mother accurately. This is what it was like to both love and fear her.”

This is very different from the deep personal hurt Tom Hanks has talked about before regarding his divorce from Susan Dillingham—a time he has said was extremely hard for him. In the past, he has emphasized how much he wanted to give his children a stable and happy life, showing how committed he was to their emotional health.

Later in life, Hanks came to believe that her mother’s actions might have been caused by an undiagnosed mental illness, possibly bipolar disorder, which could have led to periods of paranoia and delusions. Looking back, this understanding helped Hanks make sense of her traumatic experiences, seeing her mother’s behavior through the lens of mental health struggles. Still, this realization didn’t lessen the deep pain the abuse caused her.

The memoir isn’t just about suffering—it also shows how important her brother’s support was and her father’s eventual involvement. Hanks writes about a particularly bad fight with her mother where her brother Colin stepped in to help calm things down. This moment, which she describes in detail, became a turning point.

After it happened, she finally told her father about the abuse, which led to a change in custody arrangements. The help she got from Colin and, later, from her father was crucial in getting through the toughest parts of her childhood. The memoir doesn’t oversimplify things—instead, it focuses on the complicated nature of family and how childhood trauma can shape a person’s life.