Rita Wilson has spoken candidly about the devastating loss of her mother, Dorothy Wilson, who died in 2014 after a battle with Alzheimer's disease. The actress and singer-songwriter revealed how the experience transformed her relationship with her four children, prompting her to be more open and honest with them.
“Even though she was my best friend, and I thought I had asked her everything that I could possibly want to ask her, still there's things I wish I had asked her, that I wish I had known,” Wilson told People. She reflected on the loss in her emotional song “Your Mother,” with lyrics that include: “You'll never have another / Your mother.”
Wilson, who shares sons Chet, 35, and Truman, 30, with husband Tom Hanks, and is stepmother to his children Colin, 48, and E.A., 43, said she now encourages others to ask their mothers questions while they are still alive. “For my kids nowadays, I'm probably a bit more unfiltered with them,” she explained. “I just tell them things all the time... it's really that desire to feel that you're really known, that there's no barriers.”
The star also discussed her family history of secrecy, which she uncovered on the TV show Who Do You Think You Are? in 2012. She discovered that her father, Hassan Halilov Ibrahimoff, had been married previously in Bulgaria and lost his first wife and infant son shortly after the child's birth—a story he never shared. “They kept things so private… I think if we were all more open with each other, then we all can see that we're all in the same boat,” she said on the How To Fail with Elizabeth Day podcast.
Wilson’s father escaped a labour camp in communist Bulgaria in 1949 and immigrated to the US, where he met her mother. “He and my mom were married for 59 years, and they were an incredible couple and incredible parents,” she concluded.
