Tom Hanks believes becoming a young father prevented him from getting hooked on alcohol and dabbling in drugs. 

The 59-year-old actor welcomed his first child Colin with his ex-wife Samantha Lewes when he was just 21 and he's convinced the responsibility he gained from it, after just hitting adulthood himself, stopped him from going off the rails. 

Speaking to the Radio Times magazine, he said: "I'm lucky. I was in charge of offspring at a very early age, so I didn't have the luxury of being able to get stoned a lot. And I never drank too much. I was never what I call a s**tfaced artist. I thought it was more fun just to be seeing what was going on. I did my share, but it didn't become a habit."

However, although the 'Cast Away' star - who also has Elizabeth, 33, with Samantha and Chet, 25, and Truman, 20, with his current spouse Rita Wilson - didn't destroy his life by using drugs or hitting the bottle, he does think his poor diet growing up has led to him developing Type 2 diabetes. 

Hanks, who made the revelation in 2013, explained: "I'm part of the lazy American generation that has blindly kept dancing through the party and now finds ourselves with a malady. I was heavy. You've seen me in movies, you know what I looked like. I was a total idiot. 

"I thought I could avoid it by removing the buns from my cheeseburgers. Well, it takes a little bit more than that."

But the talented star is adamant he will beat the metabolic disorder, which occurs when the body doesn't produce enough insulin to function properly, eventually.

He said: "My doctor says if I can hit a target weight, I will not have Type 2 diabetes any more."