Tom Hanks gets emotional about his lonely childhood

Tom Hanks gave an emotional interview on BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs as he spoke of the loneliness he felt growing up.

The emotion was triggered by one of Hanks’ music choices; Strauss’s Also Sprach Zarathustra. The Oscar-winning actor had to pause to collect himself as he discussed the impact of hearing the song as it brought back memories of a lonely childhood which involved his father living in as many as 10 houses in just five years.

He told D.I.D host Kirsty Young: “This was the ‘wow’ moment of my life going from a kid trying to figure out what’s interesting in this life to young man yearning to be an artist.

“I started asking myself: ‘How do I find the vocabulary for what’s rattling around in my head?’. Not long after I started going to the American Conservatory theatre by myself to see plays I had no idea even existed.”

Young went on to ask what the feelings in his head were with Hanks taking a breather before answering “What have you done to me? No, it’s all right, because I put too much thought into this list. What it was, it was the vocabulary of loneliness,” he said.

Hanks then talked about the life-changing moments which helped to “quell his loneliness”.

“Having a kid at 21 was the greatest thing that ever happened to me” and at 27, he married Rita Wilson: “you end up meeting that other person that you’re like, ‘She gets it’. I don’t think I’ll ever be lonely any more, that’s how I felt when I met my wife.”

Another track he chose which took him back down memory lane was The Beatles’ ‘There’s a Place’, as he revealed how sharing a room with his brother and father as a seven-year-old made him seek a place where “I won’t be alone, I won’t be lonely, instead I’ll feel content”.

You can hear Hanks’s full Desert Island Discs on BBC iPlayer Radio.