Tom Hanks gets candid about what his four children have taught him and how different they are

Tom Hanks has opened up about what parenting four children has taught him in a candid new interview.

The Hollywood icon, 68, is dad to son Colin, 46, and daughter Elizabeth, 42, with late ex-wife Samantha Lewes and shares sons Chet, 34, and Truman, 28, with wife of 36 years Rita Wilson, 68.

Appearing on the podcast On Purpose with Jay Shetty, the Forrest Gump actor said he tries to parent differently to his own parents - who divorced in 1960 when Hanks was just four years old,

The Concord, California native said: 'My parents were very preoccupied with the positives and miseries of their lives. I like to joke that they pioneered the marriage dissolution laws for the state of California...My home environment was fluid in that we moved a lot. 

'And we were suddenly living with a whole different set of people because my parents got remarried and whatnot. By the time I was seven, I had lived in eight different homes. By the time I was 10, I lived in ten different homes.

Discussing his approach to fatherhood he said: 'I made every mistake. You know, you scar the kids somehow in the same exact way. And as they get older, you come back around and (say), "Hey, can I talk about what a knothead I was with you for all those years?" And (they say), "Yeah, sure, dad. Yeah, I’ve been kind of waiting for this. Why don’t you unload.”

'But I would say at the same time... does it come up to be 50-50? Maybe the attitude and the life that we led. The laughs, that stuff’s worth its weight in gem-encrusted gold.'

He said his four children had taught him 'how different they all are. They are not the same type of human being ever.'

Hanks also recalled a story about youngest child Truman which said served as a learning experience to him. 

He said: 'My youngest at one point said something that was definitely true for him. And I thought is in fact true for all of my kids, which makes me feel good. He was younger. He was like seven or eight. I said, "Oh, at one point, let’s go down — we were in New York — let’s go down to the park and we’ll take our gloves, we’ll throw it around. We’ll bat the balls. We’ll just find a place (on the) grass." And (he) said, ‘OK, let’s do that."'

'And it got away from me' and their outing 'didn’t happen.'

'Something happened and I realized, Oh, the sun’s going down now. And I said, "Oh my God. Oh my God. Hey, I’m sorry. I said, we were going to go down and throw the ball around. It got away from me. Forgive me." And he said, "No, that’s OK, dude." And he sounded disappointed.'

He told Truman: 'I don’t want you to be bored. 'And he looked at me with a look on his face and said, "Dad, I’m never bored." And that... speaks to curiosity and drive and also the comfort of where one is in order to feel free in order to explore whatever world that is.'

He realized his children 'had the ability to pursue their own interests without being prodded, without being forced to. I’ve learned from that.

'They have never said that they’re bored. They’ve always had some action thing that was going on, whether I understood their passion for it or not.'

Colin, Chet and Truman have gone into acting - while Elizabeth is a writer. 

Chet has previously opened up about the severity of his past drug addiction and the impact it had on his famous parents.

Chet compared himself to Al Pacino's Scarface character Tony Montana when discussing his past cocaine addiction on Bradley Martyn's Raw Talk.

The actor said: 'I'm a f**king cokehead, straight up. Not anymore, but that is my drug of choice - cocaine, bro, like Tony Montana!

'You’re like, 'I know this dude's a f**king cokehead, but I want a little bump,

'I would go do coke with the cokeheads, and they would be telling me, like, "Yo, chill, bro. … Wait a second. Give it like 15 minutes." I couldn't get enough of that s**t.'

Hanks, who has been sober for almost two years, says of his past addiction: 'It’s terrible. It eats away,. You just, like, wither away 'cause you can't eat, you can't sleep.'

Hanks and Wilson famously staged an intervention for their teenage son - with Chet previously revealing they had sent him to a 'wilderness camp' back in 2008 to help him deal with his addiction issues when he was still in high school. 

Chet said he bears no ill-will towards his parents for taking the drastic step, adding: 'I had been a really good, innocent kid my whole life. And then one day I just make that leap, take that step and it was like, 'What the f**k.' Where has my child gone."

'Smoking weed, getting drunk, and doing stupid s**t. It was regular, but it was such an abrupt change that it was concerning.'

He checked into rehab in 2015 after turning to crack to fuel his addiction, and in September 2022, marked one year of sobriety. 

'The decision was final. Never going back to that. Ever. This is just the beginning. Today can be the day that changes your life forever,' he had typed in the caption of his post. 

Chet has previously shared about his drug addiction, which he claimed to have battled since he was 16 years old.

'I’ve been struggling with substance abuse since I was 16 years old. Finally at the age of 24 I decided to get some help,' he shared on Instagram in 2014.