Chet Hanks has shared a rare photo with his famous father, Tom Hanks, in a new Instagram post.
The 33-year-old actor and rapper took to the social media platform on 26 December, where he shared a photo alongside the 67-year-old Oscar winner. In the photo, the father-son duo posed side by side as they were both bundled up in zip-up jackets. The Forrest Gump star wore a black beanie and eyeglasses with transparent frames, while the Curb Your Enthusiasm actor sported a Los Angeles Dodgers baseball cap.
“Gang,” Chet simply wrote in the caption.
The Elvis star shares son Chet with his wife and fellow actor, Rita Wilson. The Hollywood couple, who have been married since 1988, also share 28-year-old son Truman Hanks. Tom is a father to three children from his previous marriage to ex-wife Samantha Lewes: Colin Hanks, 46, and Elizabeth Ann Hanks, 41. Lewes, who was married to the actor for nearly 10 years, died in 2002 following a battle with bone cancer.
Chet, real name Chester Marlon, has previously opened up about his rollercoaster relationship with his father. In a video posted to his YouTube channel, “Hanx Fit”, the musician claimed that he did not have a “strong male role model” while growing up. During the February 2022 episode, he explained that he was perceived by his peers as “arrogant, entitled and spoiled” due to his famous family. However, Chet said that he “didn’t have a strong male role model to tell me ‘bro, f*** these people, they are just jealous of you.’”
The Empire actor admitted that he faced resentment for his father winning multiple Oscars. “There’s a lot of advantages [of being a celebrity kid], but sometimes it can be pretty weird,” he said. “I got to do a lot of cool s*** 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,” Chet continued, adding that his entire “experience was even more complicated because, on top of fame already being toxic, I wasn’t even famous”.
“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,” he said.
The Shameless star has also been open about his struggles with addiction, revealing that his parents sent him to a wilderness programme for “troubled teens” amid his battle with substance abuse. During an episode of the Ivan Paychecks podcast in November last year, Chet confessed that his early battles with addiction put a strain on his relationship with Tom and Rita.
“My lights go on at four in the morning. I look at the foot of my bed and there’s two huge dudes standing at the foot of my bed - bald heads, looking like bouncers,” Chet said, recalling how he was dragged out of his bed by two men during his junior year of high school. “They’re like: ‘You’re coming with us. We can do this the easy way or the hard way.’”
Chet was allegedly taken away to a “wilderness programme” in Utah where he was forced to do “manual labour” in the remote wilderness, with no “roof over [his] head the whole time”. However, he believed his parents were being “manipulated” by the programme, which allegedly charged parents per day for the camp.
“They knew my parents had the resources to keep me here for a long f***ing time and that’s exactly what happened,” he said, noting that he was there longer than any other teenager in the programme, apart from one person who had been there for six months.
The “White Boy Summer” rapper marked one year of sobriety in November 2022.
