Tom Hanks' Son Chet Opens Up On Life With His Famous Parents

You might say that his life hasn't always been a box of chocolates growing up with such well-known figures in his family.

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'.

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.”