Growing Up Hanks: The Real Cost of Hollywood Royalty

When you’re the son of Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson, people assume your life is one long highlight reel of privilege. But Chet Hanks just blew that fantasy wide open.

During an appearance on Joel Madden’s“Artist Friendly”podcast on Wednesday, July 8, the 35-year-old actor and musician got brutally honest about the shadow cast by his legendary parents.“Bro, I felt worthless,”he recalled, describing a childhood experience that contradicts every assumption strangers made about him. Sure, people imagined croissants being delivered by fictional butlers—the shorthand for obscene wealth and leisure—but the reality was something far more isolating.“It was, like, just feeling worthless.”

The weight of that contradiction became its own kind of burden. Chet found himself trying to convince people that his life wasn’t the fantasy they’d constructed, only to be met with eye rolls and dismissal.“You could be like,‘Yo, that’s not my life at all. I don’t live like that,’and they’ll be like,‘Yeah, whatever,'”he explained on the podcast. When your reality doesn’t match the narrative people have already written for you, the truth falls on deaf ears.

But here’s where Chet’s reflection gets interesting. He compared the pressure of being born into Hollywood royalty to the age-old saying about diamonds and pressure.“Pressure makes diamonds? Pressure also busts pipes,”he said. The process of surviving that pressure—snapping under the weight, then recollecting yourself, over and over—becomes the crucible that eventually forms something stronger. For Chet, it’s been a cycle of breaking and rebuilding until the diamond finally takes shape.

Despite the struggles, Chet hasn’t turned his back on his family. His parents, Tom, 70, and Wilson, 69—married since 1988—have fully supported his pursuits in music and acting, including his appearance on MTV’s“The Surreal Life.”That support matters. And maybe that’s the other part of the story people don’t always see: the parents who actually show up, even when their kids are working through the impossible task of becoming themselves in someone else’s shadow.