Featured Image Credit: YouTube/Bradley Martyn's Raw Talk/Michael Tran/FilmMagic/Getty
Topics: Celebrity, Drugs, Mental Health, Tom Hanks
Emily Brown
Topics: Celebrity, Drugs, Mental Health, Tom Hanks
Warning: This article contains discussion of drug addiction which some readers may find distressing.
Tom Hanks' son Chet has opened up about being subject to an intervention by his parents as his drug use caused a change in his personality.
At 33 years old, Chet is Hanks' second-youngest child and the first of two children he shares with his current wife, Rita Wilson.
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He appeared in roles in the Fox series Empire and the Showtime series Your Honor as he followed his father into the arts, but when Chet was a teenager he began to struggle with substance abuse.
Sitting down with Bradley Martyn on his Raw Talk podcast, Chet recalled: "Once I started branching out and wanting to... burst out of that bubble, it was so abrupt.
"I had been like a really good innocent kid my whole life and then one day I just make that leap."
Chet went to rehab in 2014 and sought to get sober for his daughter, Michaiah Hanks, but he's has now spoken about the role his mom and dad played in getting him on a better path.
Looking back, Chet said the drug he 'had the most problem with' was cocaine.
He described himself as a 'f**king cokehead', but clarified he doesn't use the drug any more.
Still, there was a time in his life when he likened himself to Al Pacino's character in Scarface, Tony Montana. Pacino's character runs a drug cartel, and is known for the excessive amount of coke he uses throughout the movie.
"I would go do coke with the cokeheads," Chet recalled, revealing that even other drug users would encourage him to slow down.
"They would be telling me, like, ‘Yo, chill, bro. Wait a second. Give it like 15 minutes'," he said, adding: "I couldn't get enough of that."
When he was 17 years old, Hanks and Wilson noticed an 'abrupt change' to Chet's personality and decided to stage an intervention by sending him away.
He recalled: "I wake up in the morning, it's 4 o'clock in the morning and there's two huge f**cking dudes standing at the foot of my bed, looking at me. And they go, ‘You're coming with us.'"
Chet described becoming part of the 'troubled teen' industry as his parents attempted to put a stop to his dangerous behavior, but he made clear he didn't hold a grudge against them for their actions.
"It's nothing against them, man," he said, adding that his mom was the more concerned out of his two parents.
"I love my dad, I love my mom so much, they're great parents," Chet said. "This is all water under the bridge and I don't blame them for sending me [away]."
If you want friendly, confidential advice about drugs, you can call American Addiction Centers on (313) 209-9137 24/7, or contact them through their website.