Rita Wilson Bio: Age, Height, Husband Tom Hanks, Career, Sound of a Woman, Net Worth & Facts

Rita Wilson is an American actress, singer, and producer who has spent five decades in Hollywood and somehow still found a second act. She turned 70 in October 2026, released her sixth album Sound of a Woman in May, and is preparing to return to Lena Dunham’s Girls revival — all while being half of one of the most famous marriages in show business.

Most people know her as Tom Hanks’s wife or as the producer who pushed My Big Fat Greek Wedding into theaters. Both are true, but incomplete. Wilson has appeared in dozens of films, starred on Broadway, survived breast cancer, and built a music career that did not begin until her fifties. This biography covers her age, husband, children, Greek and Bulgarian roots, career, her 2026 album, net worth, quotes, and the facts behind the famous name.

Quick Facts

Searches for Tom Hanks, Chet Hanks, Colin Hanks, Nia Vardalos, Lena Dunham, Dolly Parton, and Gregory Porter often lead readers to Wilson’s page. She is also frequently grouped with other actors who launched music careers later in life.

Early Life & Education

Rita Wilson was born Margarita Ibrahimoff on October 26, 1956, in Hollywood, California. Her mother, Dorothea Tzigkou, was an ethnic Greek raised in Sotirë, a village near the Albanian-Greek border. Her father, Hassan Halilov Ibrahimoff, was a Bulgarian Muslim (Pomak) born in Oraio, Greece, whose family moved to Bulgaria when he was a child.

Her father’s early life reads like a novel. He tried to leave Bulgaria several times, was caught, and was placed in a labor camp with a coal mine before escaping with a friend and reaching New York in 1949. He converted to Orthodox Christianity when he married, and in 1960 he changed his name to Allan Wilson, choosing the surname from a local street. The family settled in Los Angeles, where he worked as a bartender.

Wilson was raised in the Greek Orthodox faith and grew up around music and movies. She has said she was a shy kid who loved to sing at family gatherings, with “Ode to Billie Joe” by Bobbie Gentry as her go-to party piece — a surprisingly dark choice for a child, as she now admits.

She did not train as a singer. Acting came first, and later she attended the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. Her formal education in music has been entirely on the job, which is part of why her late-career pivot surprises people who only know her as an actor.

Career Journey

From The Brady Bunch to Broadway

Wilson’s screen debut came at 15, in 1972, when she played Pat Conway — one of Marcia Brady’s rivals for head cheerleader — in The Brady Bunch episode “Greg’s Triangle.” She was spotted by a producer after tagging along to an audition to support a friend. “At some point I thought, ‘Well, this is my job,'” she later recalled. “I didn’t know that it was a real job. It was just something that I landed into.”

The 1980s brought steady television work, including two appearances on M*A*S*H as Nurse Lacey, plus guest roles on Three’s Company and Bosom Buddies — the latter starring her future husband. Her film career expanded with Volunteers (1985), Sleepless in Seattle (1993), Now and Then (1995), That Thing You Do! (1996), Jingle All the Way, The Story of Us, and Runaway Bride.

On television she played Susan Borman, wife of astronaut Frank Borman, in HBO’s From the Earth to the Moon, and had recurring roles on The Good Wife and Girls. On Broadway she made her debut as Roxie Hart in Chicago in 2006 and starred in Larry David’s Fish in the Dark in 2015, taking a month-long hiatus for a double mastectomy after a breast cancer diagnosis.

The Producer Behind My Big Fat Greek Wedding

Wilson’s most consequential contribution to Hollywood may have happened off camera. She was instrumental in helping playwright Nia Vardalos turn her one-woman show into a film, producing two stage productions while the movie deal came together. My Big Fat Greek Wedding (2002) became the highest-grossing independent film of all time, and Wilson co-produced the 2016 sequel and appeared in it.

She also produced Mamma Mia! (2008) and Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again (2018), and in 2022 she produced A Man Called Otto after falling for the Swedish film it was based on. The project sold to Sony for $60 million, at the time the largest deal at the virtual European Film Market, and launched her production company, Artistic Films.

A Music Career That Started at 55

Wilson had always wanted to make music, but by the late 2000s she was being typecast as the nurturing mother, wife, or aunt. “It felt stagnant. It felt like repetition. It didn’t feel challenging,” she said. So she started writing songs and, in 2012, released her debut album AM/FM on Decca Records — a collection of 1960s and 1970s covers featuring Jimmy Webb, Chris Cornell, Faith Hill, Sheryl Crow, and Patti Scialfa.

A self-titled album followed in 2016, then Bigger Picture in 2018 and Halfway to Home in 2019, the last of which included “Throw Me a Party,” a song inspired by her cancer survival. In 2022 she released the duets album Now & Forever, with Willie Nelson, Keith Urban, Elvis Costello, and Josh Groban. Her 2026 record, Sound of a Woman, is her sixth and most personal.

She releases music through her own imprint, Sing It Loud, which she launched in 2011 and which also works with Madison Beer in a joint venture with Epic Records.

Career Stats

• 1972: Screen debut on The Brady Bunch at age 15
• 2002: Produced My Big Fat Greek Wedding, the highest-grossing independent film of all time
• 2006: Broadway debut as Roxie Hart in Chicago
• 2012: Released debut album AM/FM at age 55
• 2015: Double mastectomy after breast cancer diagnosis
• 2019: Received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame
• 2026: Released sixth album Sound of a Woman; turned 70

Personal Life

Wilson married Tom Hanks in 1988. The couple has two sons, Chet and Truman, and she is stepmother to Hanks’s children from his first marriage, Colin and Elizabeth. The family has been famous for decades, but Wilson has been careful to keep parts of her life — especially her health and her grief — at a distance from the tabloids.

Her mother, Dorothy Wilson, died in 2014 after living with Alzheimer’s disease. Wilson still talks about her in the present tense, and her 2026 album is dedicated in part to that loss. Her father, Allan, died in 2009.

• Husband: Tom Hanks, married 1988
• Sons: Chet Hanks and Truman Hanks
• Stepchildren: Colin Hanks and Elizabeth Hanks
• Father: Allan Wilson (born Hassan Halilov Ibrahimoff), a bartender who died in 2009
• Mother: Dorothea Tzigkou Wilson, who died in 2014
• Faith: Greek Orthodox

Dating History and Affairs

There is no scandal in Wilson’s romantic history. She met Hanks on the set of Bosom Buddies in the early 1980s, when she guest-starred on the show, and they married in 1988. They have been together ever since, through his rise to two Academy Awards and her own reinvention as a singer.

The couple’s most public ordeal came in March 2020, when both contracted COVID-19 while Hanks was filming in Australia. Wilson filmed an Instagram video rapping Naughty by Nature’s “Hip Hop Hooray” while in quarantine, and the clip went viral. After recovering, they donated their blood antibodies for research.

Controversies

Nepotism and the Hanks name. Wilson has been asked for years whether her career benefited from marrying one of the most powerful actors in Hollywood. She has generally answered by pointing to the work: decades of small roles, a production career built on other people’s scripts, and a music career she started at 55 without a major-label push. The debate resurfaces whenever her sons are discussed in the same breath.

The ageism argument. In her 2026 interviews, Wilson said plainly that Hollywood is “ageist” and that she was being typecast in her fifties. The comment drew attention because it came from someone with unusual access and security. Some critics argued that her ability to self-fund albums and start a production company proves the system is kinder to insiders than she acknowledges.

The COVID episode. When Wilson and Hanks announced their diagnosis in March 2020, conspiracy theorists and online trolls spread claims that the couple was faking it. The episode became an early example of pandemic misinformation, and Wilson has since spoken about how strange it was to be at the center of it.

Body image and the tattoo. Wilson has spoken openly about body image, mastectomy scars, and aging, and a 2026 photo showing a large back tattoo prompted another round of tabloid coverage. She has treated the attention with humor rather than defensiveness.

Awards & Achievements

• Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, 2019
• Produced My Big Fat Greek Wedding, the highest-grossing independent film of all time
• Produced Mamma Mia! and its sequel Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again
• Produced A Man Called Otto (2022)
• Commemorated on a Greek postal stamp in 2016 alongside Costa-Gavras and George Stephanopoulos
• Six studio albums, including AM/FM, Halfway to Home, and Sound of a Woman
• Broadway credits in Chicago and Fish in the Dark

Physical Statistics

• Height: Not publicly disclosed
• Weight: Not publicly disclosed
• Hair Color: Brown
• Eye Color: Brown
• Build: Slim
• Style: Classic Hollywood — tailored suits, bold colors, and statement jewelry on the red carpet

Quotes

“Our business is ageist. I wouldn’t say society so much — perhaps — but it’s still a very youth-oriented business.”

Rita Wilson, interview with inews, November 2026

“My mum was my best friend. I have been thinking so much of my mother, or anyone’s mother, on a birthday. I’m celebrating the person who gave birth.”

Rita Wilson, interview with inews, November 2026

“It felt stagnant. It felt like repetition. It didn’t feel challenging.”

Rita Wilson, on being typecast before her music career, inews, November 2026

Favorites

• Favorite decade of music: The 1960s and 1970s — the basis of her album AM/FM
• Favorite first concert: Led Zeppelin, seen while working at a ticket office at Universal Studios
• Favorite song as a kid: “Ode to Billie Joe” by Bobbie Gentry
• Favorite collaborator: Her family — both sons appear in her musical life
• Favorite way to celebrate: A birthday week, or a birthday month — “bring it,” as she puts it

Earnings

Rita Wilson’s net worth has not been publicly disclosed. Estimates that appear online usually bundle her finances with her husband’s, which makes any single figure unreliable. What is clear is that her income comes from several directions: acting fees, producing deals, album sales and touring, book and magazine writing, and her production company.

Her producing work has been the most lucrative strand. My Big Fat Greek Wedding cost about $5 million and grossed more than $368 million worldwide, and A Man Called Otto sold for $60 million before it even opened. Music is a smaller but growing revenue stream, particularly with a six-album catalog and a dedicated touring audience.

Interesting Facts

• Her birth name is Margarita Ibrahimoff, and her father changed the family surname to Wilson in 1960.
• She played Pat Conway, one of Marcia Brady’s cheerleader rivals, in a 1972 episode of The Brady Bunch.
• She did not release her first album until she was 55.
• She produced My Big Fat Greek Wedding, the highest-grossing independent film of all time.
• She and Tom Hanks were among the first celebrities to announce a COVID-19 diagnosis, in March 2020.
• She has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, awarded in 2019.
• She was honored on a Greek postage stamp in 2016.

Did You Know Already?

• Her father escaped a Bulgarian labor camp before arriving in New York in 1949.
• She is Greek Orthodox and has spoken about her faith in interviews.
• She starred in Chicago on Broadway as Roxie Hart.
• She had a double mastectomy in 2015 and has since advocated for breast cancer awareness.
• Her 2026 album is called Sound of a Woman.
• She turned 70 on October 26, 2026.

Social Media Links

• Official website: ritawilson.com
• Music imprint: Sing It Loud

Note: We only list verified official pages. Fan, parody, or unverified social accounts are intentionally left out.

Frequently Asked Questions

Conclusion

Rita Wilson’s career is a reminder that Hollywood careers rarely move in straight lines. She was a teenager on The Brady Bunch, a jobbing actress in the 1980s, the producer who bet on a Greek wedding comedy nobody else wanted, a cancer survivor, and finally a singer-songwriter who released her best-reviewed album at 70. The Hanks marriage is part of the story, but it is not the whole story.

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