Tom Hanks 1st Wife Samantha Lewes: Marriage, Children, Divorce, and Her Story

If you’ve searched tom hanks 1st wife, you’re looking for the woman Tom Hanks married before the world knew him as Hollywood’s most reliable leading man. His first wife was Samantha Lewes (born Susan Dillingham), an actress he met early in his career. They married in 1978, had two children, and divorced in 1987—well before his biggest fame years truly took over.

Who Was Tom Hanks’s First Wife?

Tom Hanks’s first wife was Samantha Lewes. If that name feels less familiar than “Tom Hanks,” it’s because she didn’t build the same kind of long, public celebrity career. Still, she wasn’t a random figure pulled into a famous life. Samantha acted, worked in the same creative world, and was part of Tom’s “before” era—the stage where you’re talented, ambitious, and still unsure whether your break is coming or not.

You’ll also see her referred to by her birth name, Susan Dillingham. Samantha Lewes was the name she used professionally, and it’s the name most people associate with her in biographies and older entertainment records.

How Tom Hanks Met Samantha Lewes

Tom Hanks and Samantha Lewes met when they were young, in the years before he became a household name. The simplest way to describe it is this: they met in the world of acting and performance at the exact stage where people are still hustling, still learning, and still trying to figure out how to turn talent into a life.

That timing matters. A relationship built during the “grind” years tends to feel different than one built after fame arrives. Before the fame, you’re dealing with real-world stress—money uncertainty, shifting schedules, career disappointments—and those pressures shape how a couple grows together. Samantha and Tom’s marriage was formed in that earlier reality, not in the polished glow of stardom.

When Did Tom Hanks Marry His First Wife?

Tom Hanks married Samantha Lewes in 1978. If you’re mapping his timeline, this is the period when he was still a rising actor—not yet the global icon associated with major films, awards, and unforgettable roles. It was early. It was foundational. And it happened long before the public began treating his personal life like a topic of endless curiosity.

People often assume that because Tom Hanks became “Tom Hanks,” his early marriage must have been part of that fame. It wasn’t. It was part of the quieter chapter—one that later got retroactively spotlighted because his career kept climbing.

Did Tom Hanks and Samantha Lewes Have Children?

Yes. Tom Hanks and Samantha Lewes had two children together: Colin Hanks and Elizabeth Hanks.

Colin Hanks is the name most people recognize, because he followed his father into acting and built a career that stands on its own. But the most important detail isn’t “famous kids.” It’s that the marriage created a family, and once children are involved, the relationship doesn’t simply become a closed chapter even after divorce. Parenting keeps you connected in practical ways, emotional ways, and timeline ways.

For many readers, this is the part that makes the story feel more than trivia. It isn’t just “who was his first wife?” It’s “what did that life look like before everything changed?” Having children makes the answer richer and more human.

What Their Life Looked Like Before Tom Hanks Became Mega-Famous

It’s easy to imagine early Hollywood life as glamorous, but most actors don’t start in glamour. They start in uncertainty. They start in small roles, awkward auditions, regional projects, and years of “almost.” During the period Tom and Samantha were together, Tom’s career was developing, but he wasn’t yet in the cultural position where the world would treat him like America’s favorite actor.

That means their marriage existed in a more normal kind of stress. The stress of building a future. The stress of moving for work. The stress of trying to balance ambition with family life. Even without tabloid attention, those pressures can grind down a relationship—especially when one person’s career starts accelerating fast.

And once the acceleration begins, it changes everything. Work becomes larger, travel becomes constant, public attention increases, and time becomes the rarest resource in the household. A marriage can survive that—some do, some don’t. But the lifestyle shift is real, and it’s one of the most common fault lines in relationships connected to entertainment careers.

When Did Tom Hanks and Samantha Lewes Divorce?

Tom Hanks and Samantha Lewes divorced in 1987. That date is the clean end point to the marriage timeline most readers want. And it’s a key marker because it lands before many of Tom’s most iconic, reputation-defining years. In other words, the marriage ended before the full “Tom Hanks legend” era solidified.

Divorce doesn’t automatically mean a relationship was a failure. It often means the relationship couldn’t hold the shape life had become. People grow. Pressure changes. Needs shift. The world demands different versions of you. Sometimes you evolve together. Sometimes you don’t.

Why Their Marriage Ended

People naturally want a single, neat explanation for why a marriage ends. Real life doesn’t usually offer that. With Tom Hanks and Samantha Lewes, the public record is far more about the timeline than about private details, and it’s worth keeping the conversation in the responsible lane.

What you can say without turning it into guesswork is this: the marriage happened early, they built a family, and they divorced in 1987. Like many couples—famous or not—there were likely layers of strain that outsiders can’t see. Trying to pin it on one dramatic reason is usually less accurate than accepting the simpler truth: the relationship ended, and both lives moved forward.

Who Was Samantha Lewes Beyond Being “Tom Hanks’s First Wife”?

Samantha Lewes was an actress and worked within the entertainment world, even if her name didn’t become a household brand. If you’re writing about her, it helps to treat her as more than a label. She wasn’t just “the woman before Rita.” She was a person with her own identity and her own life, who happened to share a major chapter with a man who later became massively famous.

That matters because celebrity biography content can become careless. It can flatten real people into plot points. A more respectful approach is to acknowledge what’s known—her profession, her role in Tom’s early life, her place as the mother of his older children—without inventing a personality or adding details that don’t belong to you.

Tom Hanks’s Life After His First Marriage

After the divorce, Tom Hanks’s career continued to expand, and his public image became what people now recognize: steady, likable, talented, and surprisingly consistent over decades. He later married Rita Wilson, and their relationship became the one the public associates most strongly with him—partly because it happened during years when he was more visible, and partly because it has lasted so long.

But it’s important to understand the difference between “publicly famous marriage” and “first marriage.” Samantha Lewes remains his first wife because she was part of the beginning. She’s part of the early timeline that shaped the family structure Tom still lives with today, including his relationship with his older children.

How This First Marriage Fits Into the Larger Tom Hanks Story

When you look at Tom Hanks’s life as a whole, the first marriage is a reminder that famous people don’t start famous. They start young, hopeful, uncertain, and human. Samantha Lewes is part of that humanity. She represents the stage where the future wasn’t guaranteed, the career wasn’t secure, and the relationship wasn’t being watched by millions of strangers.

And if you’re reading this because you’re curious about the “real” timeline, this is the key point: Tom Hanks’s first marriage wasn’t a celebrity event. It was a real marriage that happened before the celebrity version of Tom Hanks fully existed.