For Chet Hanks, acting seemed a natural way to follow in his famous family’s footsteps.
While Chet, 34, spoke with Bustle recently regarding his career and new role in Netflix’s basketball comedy Running Point, the actor noted his parents Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson’s success in the entertainment industry as one of the main reasons he tried his hand at acting himself.
“My dad’s an actor. My older brother’s an actor. My mom. This was the family business,” Chet told the outlet, additionally referencing Colin Hanks, 47; his father Tom shares Colin and daughter Elizabeth, 42, with his first wife Samantha Lewes. “So I [knew] that was something I would go into at some point.”
Chet recalled booking his first acting role in 2007’s live-action Bratz movie at 16, around the same time the youngest Hanks son, Truman, also began auditioning for roles. Chet recalled that he also found a love for music and began rapping around the same age.
“In the middle of my sophomore year of high school, I got to take two months off and go film this movie and hang out around a bunch of hot 19-year-old chicks,” he laughs. “It was awesome. It was the perfect first gig.”
Chet portrays a point guard named Travis Bugg in Running Point; he described the character to Bustle as “a wannabe rapper” and “a huge liability because of the controversial s— he posts on social media” and noted similarities between the character and himself in real life.
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When Chet last caught up with PEOPLE in July 2024 as he promoted his appearance on The Surreal Life: Villa of Secrets, the actor spoke about a record deal he had just signed and credited his professional success with embracing sobriety in recent years.
“One hundred percent. None of this would be possible without sobriety,” Chet said at that time. “It’s not difficult at all. What’s difficult is when you’re trying to manage your life and you’re not sober, that’s what’s difficult. When you just commit and decide and you stick to it, it’s not even something that you negotiate with. It’s just a non-negotiable. And life becomes extremely easy.”
Running Point‘s creator Mindy Kaling recently praised Chet’s work in the show during a March 6 appearance on The View, after cohost Whoopi Goldberg identified herself as a major fan of Chet’s acting.
“He got well known for some of the stuff he was saying online,” Kaling, 45, said in that interview. “What that kind of distracted from was the fact that he’s such a funny actor. It was so great to be able to show off that side of him.”
Running Point is streaming on Netflix now.
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