Tom Hanks' and Samantha Lewes' eldest son, Colin Hanks, was born on November 24, 1977, when Tom Hanks was only 21. The first quality everybody immediately notices when they see Colin Hanks is how much he looks like his father, and secondly, how indistinguishable their voices are. Despite their similarities, Colin faced a lot of misconceptions around his childhood, growing up as Tom Hanks' son — and his life wasn't as easy as some people would assume.

After his parents split, he spent every other weekend and summers in Los Angeles with his dad. He spoke about his childhood on the Armchair Expert podcast in 2018, where he said, "We definitely grew up with money, for sure, but it's nowhere near the amount of money that people would assume." Colin said he remembered being told by his mom that she didn't have money for a lot of things, but that his dad did. Colin remarked, "It was never like money is no object. It was, money is the biggest object." He also said that his dad's monumental success came after he'd already moved out, saying, "What my experience was like growing up, that ceased to exist for my siblings because it became a different kind of existence for them."

Colin met his wife, Samantha Bryant, a publicist, through mutual friends. The couple married in 2010 and had two daughters together, Olivia and Charlotte. The family now lives in a beautiful home in Studio City, California.