American actor and filmmaker Tom Hanks and his wife Rita Wilson are officially citizens of Greece as confirmed by the country’s Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis.
Hanks, 64, and Wilson, 63, appeared in an Instagram post from Prime Minister Mitsotakis, which showed both actors posing with passports alongside Mitsotakis and his wife, Mareva Grabowski.
“@ritawilson @tomhanks are now proud Greek citizens!” the caption read.
The couple frequently spends their vacations on the Greek island of Antiparos, where they purchased a plot of land to build their own house in 2004.
In December 2019, the couple and their children became honorary Greek citizens after Greece’s President Prokopis Pavlopoulos signed an honorary naturalization order allowing the actor to claim Greek citizenship. This was following Hanks’ role in helping raise awareness about the 2018 fires that devastated areas near Athens and claimed the lives of more than 100 people, CNN reports.
Hanks told reporters at the 2020 Golden Globe Awards earlier this year that Greece is a haven.
“I’ve been Hellenic now for the better part of 32 years… Greece is a haven… I’ve been around the world, I’ve been to the most beautiful places in the world, none of them tops Greece… The land, the sky, the water, it’s good for the soul, it’s a healing place,” Hanks said.
In March, Hanks announced that he and Wilson had contracted the novel coronavirus while filming in Australia.
After two weeks of isolation, the couple was able to return to their home in Los Angeles. Hanks and Wilson have since recovered and Hanks made his first appearance post-coronavirus in April as the first host of a remote “Saturday Night Live” from his kitchen.
Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson have been married for 32 years. Greece has also extended citizenship to Tom’s entire family, including their children Colin, 42, Elizabeth, 38, Chet, 29 and Truman, 24.
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