Who is Susan Dillingham and what happened to her? Tom Hanks daughter E. A. Hanks details alleged abuse from her late mother

Actress Susan Jane Dillingham, the first wife of actor Tom Hanks, passed away in 2002 from lung cancer. E. A. Hanks, her daughter, has now accused her of abusive behavior in her new memoir, "The 10: A Memoir of Family and the Open Road."

Susan Dillingham, who previously went by the stage name Samantha Lewes, met Tom Hanks while they were both students at Sacramento State University. The former couple married in 1979 but divorced in 1987 after eight years of marriage. They had two children, Colin Hanks, born in 1977, and Elizabeth Anne Hanks, born in 1982.

Susan Dillingham was awarded primary custody of both children following the divorce. More than two decades after her mother's passing, Elizabeth Anne Hanks is alleging that Dillingham subjected her to "emotional and physical violence," which she says was a constant presence in her childhood.

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More about Susan Dillingham, as her daughter makes scathing claims about childhood abuse

In E. A. Hanks' memoir, "The 10: A Memoir of Family and the Open Road," Susan Dillingham is accused of neglectful behavior. In the excerpts obtained by People Magazine, Hanks says how one day after the divorce from Tom Hanks, her mother suddenly moved to Sacramento with her and her brother, Colin, without any prior notice.

"My dad came to pick us up from school and we’re not there. And it turns out we haven't been there for two weeks and he has to track us down."

She further adds how her childhood was consumed by "confusion, violence, deprivation, and love." She says:

"I was born in Burbank, but after my parents split up, my mother took my older brother and me to live in Sacramento. I have few memories of the early years in Los Angeles. Eventually a divorce agreement was settled, and I would visit my dad and stepmother (and soon enough my younger half brothers) on the weekends and during summers, but from 5 to 14, years filled with confusion, violence, deprivation, and love.

E.A. Hanks also recounts how her mother, Susan Dillingham, often spent time alone in her room rather than spend time with her children.

"The fridge was bare or full of expired food more often than not, and my mother spent more and more time in her big four-poster bed, poring over the Bible.”

She further mentions that she has only two memories of both parents being in the same room since the divorce. She says:

"I am a kid from the First (non-famous) Marriage. My only memories of my parents in the same place at the same time are Colin’s high school graduation, then my high school graduation. I have one picture of me standing between my parents. In it, my mother’s best wig is slightly askew.”

Hank also adds a description of how, over time, her mother's erratic behavior escalated into physical violence. This ultimately led to a change in primary custody, with her father, Tom Hanks, gaining custody. By then, he was married to actress Rita Wilson. The couple had wed in 1988. They share two children, Chet Hanks and Truman Hanks.

"One night, her emotional violence became physical violence, and in the aftermath I moved to Los Angeles, right smack in the middle of the seventh grade.”

During a conversation on In Depth with Graham Bensinger, the "Cast Away" spoke about struggling with the guilt of abandoning his children from his first marriage after it ended in divorce.

"Well, I felt like I was a complete, abject, total failure and everything I thought was working was actually not working. It's a place that everybody comes to in their life for one reason or another."

He further added:

"I'd go off and talk to somebody and say, 'What... What have I done wrong?' And they would say, 'Well, what do you think you've done wrong?' 'Why am I so unhappy?' 'Well, tell me about your unhappiness.' And you work through that till you figure out that, you know, number one, you have been an idiot, but number two, you're no longer an idiot."

In the memoir, E. A. Hanks alleges that her mother, Susan Dillingham, might have been bipolar, as suggested by her behavior, although she was never clinically diagnosed. Hanks adds that, over time, her mother's erratic behavior only worsened.

“The screaming was scarier. The food was more inconsistent. The degree to which she would pray and speak to God out loud — she used to be able to keep it together in public. That went very quickly.”

She further mentions that despite everything she and her older brother went through, neither of them informed their father, Tom Hanks, about their situation.

"Because I was so young, the truth is I wouldn't inform on my mom. I was her protector, the keeper of secrets."

In an exclusive interview with People Magazine, E.A. Hanks also revealed that her mother, Susan Dillingham, had once written in her journals about her own father, John Raymond Dillingham, who was allegedly involved in the murder of a young girl. E. A. Hanks shares that she is now on a quest to know more about her maternal grandfather, who died in 1981.