Tom Hanks and his first wife, Samantha Lewes, met when they were in college. They married in 1978, a year after they welcomed their firstborn, Colin, and had another child in 1982, Elizabeth Ann, Hanks’ only daughter.
Not much is known about their relationship as Hanks was only a fledgling actor at the time, but he once told Express that it ultimately failed because they lacked the maturity to uphold the marriage. “I was just too young and insecure for marriage,” he admitted. “I was not really ready to take on those responsibilities.”
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And while splitting from Lewes was the right thing to do then, he couldn’t help but worry whether he was technically ‘abandoning’ Colin and Elizabeth, which was the last thing he wanted to do given that he, too, grew up in a broken family. Speaking on the “In Depth with Graham Belisinger” podcast, the award-winning actor confessed that he thought he was an irresponsible dad. “I couldn’t be a worse father, and I couldn’t be a worse human being. I remember all those feelings of as though I had cursed innocent beings with my own failings,” he shared. “I think my job as a parent, one of the things I’ve learned is to try to guarantee a carefree life for your children for as long as possible … I felt in the course of being their divorced single guy dad that I was burning them with cares that they didn’t deserve to have to care about.”
