Tom Hanks’ son Chet claimed he did not have a ‘strong male role model’ during his teens while he coped with the pressures of having celebrity parents.
Although Chet, 31, assured the public that ‘I love my parents’ and ‘wouldn’t want any different parents,’ he confessed having a famous family is ‘a double-edged sword.’
He said many people had ‘contempt’ for him as a movie star’s child, and while trying to navigate the ‘s***-talking’ and the ‘d***-riders,’ he lacked ‘a strong male role model’ who could have told him: ”Hey, bro, f*** these people. They are just jealous of you.”
Looking back: Tom Hanks’ son Chet claimed he did not have a ‘strong male role model’ during his teens while he coped with the pressures of having celebrity parents
He shared that ‘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.’
Chet shared that while his father was ‘on this pedestal,’ he himself was ‘assumed’ to be ‘a really arrogant, entitled spoiled brat even though I really wasn’t.’
During his high school and college years ‘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.’
As a result he wound up with ‘a chip on my shoulder’ and formed a ‘hard exterior’ because of the ‘anger’ he was harboring.
Family time: Chet, 31, assured the public that ‘I love my parents’ and ‘wouldn’t want any different parents’; Chet and Tom are pictured at Madison Square Garden in 2015
He recalled that ‘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.’
At the time he was also fielding ‘d***-riders’ who ‘didn’t give a f***ing s*** about me’ but were ‘just infatuated with the idea of hanging around f***ing Tom Hanks’ son.’
The experience left him ‘distrustful’ and ‘defensive’ and ‘led me down the wrong path because I felt I had something to prove. 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.’
Although this tactic ‘worked for awhile’ he was set ‘down a path of self-destruction through my 20s’ – but now at 31 ‘I don’t really have anything to prove anymore.’
Benefit of hindsight: What he failed to grasp at the time was that ‘the reason I was dealing with all this animosity’ was in part ‘because people were jealous’
What he failed to grasp at the time was that ‘the reason I was dealing with all this animosity’ was in part ‘because people were jealous.’
Chet said that in addition to having a world-famous father he was not ‘a timid, you know, kid who just wanted to blend in and stay out of the spotlight, then I wouldn’t have been a factor. People woulda been like: ‘Oh, Chet Hanks? Tom Hanks’ kid? Yeah, whatever, he’s cool, like yeah, he’s a cool guy, whatever.”
However he ‘was a decent-looking kid, you know, I was athletic, I was good with girls’ and that in combination with ‘the fame aspect’ made people ‘jealous of me and they were projecting their own insecurities onto me.’
Chet asserted: ‘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.”‘
Talk about it: Chet Hanks admitted all kinds of privileges that came along with the star-studded status as he boasted about being ‘blessed’ to travel the world and stay in luxurious digs thanks to his parents’ careers
During the same video he admitted all kinds of privileges that came along with the star-studded status as he boasted about being ‘blessed’ to travel the world and stay in luxurious digs thanks to his parents’ careers.
Chet, 31, took to YouTube with a new video series where he praised his mom and dad for his upbringing while talking about a few of the ‘advantages’ he received being the son of Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson.
‘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.’
Proud parents: Chet is the son of Hollywood icons Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson, who also have a son named Truman. Tom has son Colin and daughter Elizabeth with late ex-wife Samantha Lewes; seen in 2020
‘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’