Who was Tom Hanks’ first wife Susan Dillingham, aka Samantha Lewes? The couple’s daughter Elizabeth has written a memoir about her late mum’s troubled life – and the abuse she suffered as a result
Tom Hanks’ daughter Elizabeth has written a memoir detailing her traumatic childhood with mum Susan Dillingham, who she says ‘pushed me, shook me, pulled my hair and locked me in a closet’
Dillingham, who went by the stage name Samantha Lewes, had primary custody of their children. In her memoir, Hanks reveals how one day after the divorce, Dillingham moved the family to Sacramento without notice, away from their father, who only saw them on designated weekends and summer holidays.
“My dad came to pick us up from school and we’re not there,” recalls Hanks. “And it turns out we haven’t been there for two weeks and he has to track us down.”
Hanks goes on to reveal the trauma she endured living in Sacramento with her mum.
“I was a Sacramento girl. I lived in a white house with columns, a backyard with a pool, and a bedroom with pictures of horses plastered on every wall,” Hanks writes. But as the years went on, she says “The backyard became so full of dog s*** that you couldn’t walk around it, the house stank of smoke. The fridge was bare or full of expired food more often than not, and my mother spent more and more time in her big four-poster bed, poring over the Bible.”
In her memoir, Elizabeth Hanks takes readers on a six-month-long road trip to Florida, where her mother’s family once lived, to learn more about her mum.
In 2002, Dillingham died of lung cancer. She was 49 years old. Here’s everything to know about Tom Hanks’ troubled first wife.