Samantha Lewes: The Life, Career, and Untold Story of Tom Hanks’ First Wife

Here’s the detail that gets buried in every biography written about Samantha Lewes. Colin Hanks was born August 24, 1977. Tom Hanks and Samantha Lewes didn’t marry until 1978. That’s not a scandal — it’s just what actually happened, two young people at Sacramento State University, and a pregnancy that came before a wedding, in an era when that still meant something socially.

However, it modifies the narrative’s structure. It means this wasn’t a carefully planned Hollywood marriage. It was two people figuring something out together, fast, in their mid-twenties, while one of them was just starting to build a career that would eventually dwarf anything either of them could have anticipated.

The polished version — college sweethearts, early marriage, two children, then the divorce, then Tom’s fame and Samantha’s quiet life and tragic death — erases the specific, slightly chaotic human texture of what actually happened.

Quick Bio

Detail	What’s verified	What’s contested
Birth name	Susan Jane Dillingham	Solid
Stage name	Samantha Lewes	Solid
Born	November 29, 1952, San Diego, California	Most sources say San Diego; a few say Oakland
Father	John Raymond Dillingham — U.S. Marine	Confirmed in multiple sourced bios
Education	California State University, Sacramento	Solid — met Hanks there
Children	Colin Hanks (b. August 24, 1977); Elizabeth Ann Hanks (b. May 17, 1982)	Solid
Marriage	Tom Hanks, 1978–1987	Solid — Colin born one year before the wedding
Acting credits	Bosom Buddies (1980), Mr. Success (1984), General Hospital	Solid; Mr. & Mrs. Bridge (1990) credit is disputed
Died	March 12, 2002, Sacramento; bone cancer with metastasis	Age at death: 49 (sources say 49 and 50; she was 49 — died before her 50th birthday in November)
Tom Hanks quote	“Most profound loss of my adult life” — circulates everywhere	Cannot be traced to any primary interview; may be fabricated
Elizabeth Hanks quote	“The experience of growing up with her was good days and bad days”	Confirmed — from a Distractify piece; only real family voice in the record

The Two People at Sacramento State

In the early 1970s, she was Susan Jane Dillingham in Sacramento. Her father was a Marine. She was at Cal State Sacramento studying — the sources don’t specify what, which is probably because nobody’s ever asked or found a record. She wanted to act. Somewhere along the road, she adopted the stage name Samantha Lewes.

Tom Hanks showed up at Sacramento State. They met. The specific circumstances of how they found each other in a university of tens of thousands of students — also not in the record, because why would it be? This was 1973 or 1974, two people in their early twenties meeting at a California state school, before either of them was anything.

The important biographical fact that every clean version glosses over: they had Colin before they had a marriage. August 1977. A baby. Then a wedding in 1978. Then Elizabeth in 1982, four years into the marriage. Then Tom Hanks started getting famous.

Think about what that timeline looks like from her side. You’re raising a toddler while your husband starts booking roles. He got a sitcom — Bosom Buddies, 1980, two seasons, Tom and Peter Scolari in drag. She appears in it too — a small role, the kind you get when you’re the wife of a cast member who’s trying to stay involved in something she cares about. Then he started booking bigger work.

What Calling Her a “Talented Actress” Actually Means

Every single page about Samantha Lewes calls her a “talented actress” and “accomplished actress” and “actress in her own right.” Let me tell you what that career actually looked like.

Bosom Buddies, 1980. A supporting role in a sitcom where her husband was the lead. Two seasons, ABC. Mr. Success, 1984. A film that received minimal release and has largely disappeared from cultural memory. General Hospital, the ABC soap opera — a recurring appearance that presumably ended when it ended. That appears to be the professional acting record.

That’s not nothing. That’s also not the career of someone who was moving toward stardom independently. That’s the career of someone who is working, trying, taking the parts available to her, in an industry that gets harder when your husband is becoming one of the most recognizable faces in American cinema.

Here’s the thing. By 1984, Tom Hanks was doing Splash and Bachelor Party. By 1988 he was doing Big and getting his first Academy Award nomination. That trajectory, from their perspective, was happening while they were married — while Elizabeth was a toddler, while Samantha was trying to build her own career.

She stopped appearing in credited roles after 1984. The marriage ended in 1987. I’ll leave the connection between those facts to you.

Elizabeth Hanks’s Six Words

The most valuable primary material in the entire Samantha Lewes record is this. Elizabeth Hanks, speaking about her mother, said: “The experience of growing up with her was good days and bad days.”

Six words about bad days. That’s the whole thing. That’s the only sentence in the record from someone who actually knew Samantha Lewes, who grew up in the same house with her, who had a complicated enough experience to characterize it honestly rather than just say something warm and appropriate.

“Good days and bad days” is what you say when things are real. It’s not what you say when things are simple.

What were the bad days? Nobody knows. What was complicated? Nobody has said. The public record of Samantha Lewes’s life is almost entirely constructed from the outside, and the one person who gave a window into the actual experience of knowing her used language suggests the window would not be entirely flattering.

I find that more honest and more interesting than any “beloved actress” framing.

After the Divorce: Sacramento Alone

The divorce finalized in 1987. Tom Hanks married Rita Wilson in 1988. He went on to win two back-to-back Academy Awards, become synonymous with American decency and moral leadership, and build one of the most durable careers in Hollywood history.

Samantha Lewes — Susan Dillingham — went back to Sacramento.

She didn’t do more film or television work after the marriage ended, as far as any source can confirm. She didn’t write a memoir. She didn’t perform on chat shows. She didn’t leverage proximity to one of the most famous actors in the world into any kind of continuing public career.

She was 34 when the marriage ended. She had two kids — Colin was ten, Elizabeth was five. She had the stage name and the Sacramento roots and whatever settlement came out of the divorce.

And then she simply doesn’t appear in the record for fifteen years.

The Cancer and the Silence Around It

She was diagnosed with bone cancer. The sources say “a few months” before her death, which would put the diagnosis in late 2001. The cancer had metastasized to her lungs and brain by the time she died on March 12, 2002.

She was 49 years old. This is worth stating precisely because multiple sources say she was 50 — she died in March, eight months before her 50th birthday in November. She was 49.

Who was with her? The sources don’t say. Were Tom and Rita involved in any way? The sources don’t say. Was Colin, then 24 years old, present? Was Elizabeth, then 19? Nobody’s said it publicly.

The quote attributed to Tom Hanks — “the most profound loss of my adult life” — circulates across farm pages but I cannot find a primary source for it. No interview. No publication. No transcript. It may be real. It may be fabricated to give the story emotional weight it lacked. I’m not going to treat it as a verified fact.

What is documented: Tom Hanks acknowledged her death, spoke of her with respect, and ensured his public statements honored her without exposing anything private.

My Verdict

Samantha Lewes is called Tom Hanks’s first wife and that is true and also insufficient. She was Susan Jane Dillingham who took a stage name and went to Sacramento State and had a baby before her wedding and worked as an actress in a career that never matched her ambitions and raised two children after a divorce from someone who became one of the most famous people in America and then moved quietly through the last fifteen years of her life before bone cancer took her at forty-nine.

That’s the whole story. It’s not a tragedy in the Hollywood sense. It’s not an inspiration arc. It’s not a cautionary tale. It’s the life of a woman who made choices, had a career that didn’t go where she wanted, raised children whose experience of growing up with her involved good days and bad days, and died in Sacramento in the spring.

The coverage turns her into a footnote in Tom Hanks’s biography or a “tragic figure” with a capital T. She wasn’t a footnote and she wasn’t a symbol. She was a specific person who wanted to be an actress, couldn’t quite get there, and figured out what else life was going to be.

Elizabeth Hanks told you something true with six words. The rest of the coverage has been filling that space with something softer ever since.

FAQs

1. What was Samantha Lewes’s real name?

Susan Jane Dillingham. She adopted the stage name Samantha Lewes for her acting career.

2. When was Samantha Lewes born?

November 29, 1952, in San Diego, California. Some sources say Oakland — San Diego is the more consistent and better-sourced location.

3. How did Samantha Lewes meet Tom Hanks?

They met while both attending California State University, Sacramento, in the early 1970s.

4. When did Tom Hanks and Samantha Lewes get married?

In 1978. Their son Colin was born in August 1977, a year before the wedding.

5. What acting work did Samantha Lewes do?

She appeared in Bosom Buddies (1980, the sitcom where Tom Hanks also starred), Mr. Success (1984 film), and General Hospital. Her credited work appears to have ended around 1984. A Mr. & Mrs. Bridge (1990) credit appears in some sources but is unconfirmed by primary databases.

6. How old was Samantha Lewes when she died?

Forty-nine. She died March 12, 2002. Her 50th birthday would have been November 29, 2002. Multiple sources incorrectly say she was 50.

7. What caused Samantha Lewes’s death?

lung and brain metastases from bone malignancy. She died at her home in Sacramento, California, on March 12, 2002.

8. Did Tom Hanks say the divorce was a “profound loss”?

A quote — “the most profound loss of my adult life” — circulates widely. I could not trace this to any verified primary source, interview, or publication. Treat it as unverified.

9. What did her daughter Elizabeth Hanks say about her?

Elizabeth has said: “The experience of growing up with her was good days and bad days.” That’s the most honest primary statement in the record about who Samantha Lewes actually was to those who knew her.

10. What did Samantha Lewes do between the 1987 divorce and her 2002 death?

Nothing documented. She returned to Sacramento and largely disappeared from any public record for fifteen years before her death.

11. Did Tom Hanks acknowledge her death publicly?

Yes, with appropriate respect and without exposing private details. The specific statement he made is not fully documented in primary sources beyond brief acknowledgments.

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