Tom Hanks’ son Chet has spoken out about his ‘complicated’ upbringing, suggesting that growing up with famous parents isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be.
You might say that his life hasn't always been a box of chocolates growing up with such well-known figures in his family.
Chet, the 31-year-old son of the Forrest Gump star and fellow actor Rita Wilson, posted a video on his YouTube channel in which he claimed that whilst he ‘loves his parents’ and ‘wouldn’t want any different parents’, he lacked a ‘strong male role model’ during his teenage years.
He said many people had ‘contempt’ for him because of his famous parents, and needed someone to tell him, ‘Hey, bro, f*** these people. They are just jealous of you'.
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Hanks said: “My experience was even more complicated because on top of fame already being toxic, I wasn't even famous.
“You know, I was just the son of somebody famous so I hadn't even done anything to deserve any sort of recognition and that created a lot of contempt, a lot of contempt for me.”
Hanks went on to say that whilst his dad was ‘on this pedestal’ he was just thought of as a ‘really arrogant, entitled spoiled brat even though I really wasn't.’
“People would make up their minds about me before they even got a chance to know me and it was extremely hard to break down their walls so I encountered a lot of disdain, a lot of animosity, a lot of negativity because everybody was just prepared to hate my guts,” he added.
From that, he developed a ‘chip on [his] shoulder’ and a ‘hard exterior’ because of all the ‘anger’ that he was keeping.
Hanks continued: “People did kinda f*** with me a lot growing up.
“It was never to my face.
“It was always behind my back, in the forms of like gossip and s***-talking.”
He also had to fight against ‘d***-riders’ who ‘didn’t give a f***ing s*** about me’ but were simply ‘infatuated with the idea of hanging around f***ing Tom Hanks’ son’.
That in turn made him ‘distrustful’ and ‘defensive’ and – he claims – ‘led me down the wrong path because I felt I had something to prove.
He said: “I felt that I had to be this bad motherf***er so that people wouldn't f*** with me, and I would rather be intimidating to other people than allow people to try to intimidate me.”
Despite heading down ‘a path of self-destruction’ during his 20s, he now says he ‘doesn’t have anything to prove’ anymore.
Hanks added that he struggled to realise that ‘the reason I was dealing with all this animosity’ was ‘because people were jealous’.
He was not – he says - a ‘timid kid who just wanted to blend in and stay out of the spotlight, then I wouldn't have been a factor'.
Hanks went on: “People would have been like: 'Oh, Chet Hanks? Tom Hanks' kid? Yeah, whatever, he's cool, like yeah, he's a cool guy, whatever. He was a decent-looking kid', you know, I was athletic, I was good with girls," which alongside his famous upbringing made people 'jealous of me and they were projecting their own insecurities onto me'.
“I needed to hear that as a kid. I didn't have like a strong male role model to tell me that, to tell me: ‘Hey, bro, f*** these people. They're just jealous of you. You have all these things that they want so they're trying to f***ing throw their shade at you so that you can feel s***y about yourself because they're jealous'.’”
However, he did also say that his upbringing was privileged, and that he was ‘blessed’ to have been born to famous parents.
“There's a lot of advantages, but sometimes it can be pretty weird,” he said.
“I got to do a lot of cool s**t that a lot of people don't get the opportunity to do.
“I got to travel the world, stay in nice hotels, fly on private planes and I'm very blessed for that. I wouldn't change my situation.”
Topics: TV and Film, Celebrity, Tom Hanks
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