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Thursday December 26, 2024

Tom Hanks recalls dealing with parents’ divorce during childhood

Tom Hanks reflects on life as kid with ‘very preoccupied parents’, ‘pioneered marriage dissolution laws’

By Web Desk
October 29, 2024

Tom Hanks recounted his maybe happily “isolated” childhood, and how he coped up with the divorce of his late parents, Janet Marylyn Frager and Amos Mefford Hanks at the time.

During a recent appearance on the On Purpose with Jay Shetty podcast, the Concord, California-born actor discussed themes of home in his upcoming film, Here.

When Shetty asked about the movie's deeper messages, the actor hinted at connections to his own childhood experiences.

“So many things lined up with me at my age,' the 68-year-old Academy Award winner said during the conversation. “I was the third of four.”

“My parents were very preoccupied with all certain, you know, like the positives and miseries of their lives I like to joke that they pioneered the marriage dissolution laws for the state of California, you know, back, they got divorced when only like Zsa Zsa Gabor ... got divorces.”

Hanks also shed a light on how his family shifted residences and travelled “a lot” amid his parents' divorce and frequent remarriages.

“By the time I was seven, I had lived in eight different homes,” Hanks shared. “By the time I was ten, I lived in ten different homes. And it's always been like that. So, I am not intimidated by it. And I don't think I'm damaged by it - at all.”

Hanks further opened up on using isolation as a escape, saying that the “ability to, to detach from those circumstances without a doubt, is a good thing.”