Did You Know The Americas Narrator Tom Hanks is Related to a Former US President?
Oscar-winner, The Americas narrator, and presidential descendant. Tom Hanks really does have it all!
Tom Hanks has two Oscars, seven Primetime Emmys, four Golden Globes, two SAG Awards, and the blood of a presidential legend. Back in the 2010s, the acclaimed Hollywood actor (who is currently serving as the narrator for NBC's hit nature docuseries The Americas) revealed that he was distantly related to one of the country's most beloved presidents.
As he continues to lend his voice to the wonders of the natural world spread all across the continent, it's fitting that Hanks, an avid history lover, has a connection to one of the greatest figures to shape modern-dan America.
What president is Tom Hanks related to?
Forrest Gump actor Tom Hanks is a descendant of President Abraham Lincoln. While the Hanks genealogy is a confusing one, this 2009 article published by Herald & Review does an excellent job of untangling the the gnarled branches of the family tree. In short, he was distantly related to Abraham Lincoln via the sixteenth president's mother, Nancy Hanks.
"The members of my branch of the family are either cousins or in-laws or poor relations," Hanks told Ancestry.com at the time. "So when I was at school, guess which president I was always doing essays on."
Fittingly enough, Hanks took on the role of narrator for National Geographic's small screen adaptation of Bill O'Reilly and Martin Dugard's book, Killing Lincoln, which takes a deep dive into the assassination of Abraham Lincoln at the hands of Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth.
Hanks's appreciation for American history runs deep, as evidenced by his numerous collaborations with director Steven Spielberg — namely Saving Private Ryan, Band of Brothers, The Pacific, The Post, and Masters of the Air.
"I consider myself a lay historian who talks way too much at dinner parties, leading with questions like, 'Do you know that the Erie Canal is the reason Manhattan became the economic center of America?'" the actor wrote in a 2021 op-ed for The New York Times. "Some of the work I do is making historically based entertainment. Did you know our second president once defended in court British soldiers who fired on and killed colonial Bostonians — and got most of them off? By my recollection, four years of my education included studying American history. Fifth and eighth grades, two semesters in high school, three quarters at a community college. Since then, I’ve read history for pleasure and watched documentary films as a first option. "
As fate would have it, another Hollywood A-lister, George Clooney, is a distant cousin (half-first cousin five times removed, to be exact) of the man who issued the Emancipation Proclamation and successfully reunified the United States in the wake of our country's brutal civil war.
New episodes of The Americas air on NBC every Sunday at 7:00 p.m. ET.
