TOM Hanks admits life stopped his wife when Rita Wilson was diagnosed with breast cancer last year.

The 59-year-old mother-of-two underwent a double mastectomy and reconstructive surgery after she received the devastating news in December, and whilst Rita is finally cancer-free, her husband has opened up about the "hell" their family were in during that time.

Tom, also 59, shared: "What has been so amazing about it is how powerfully it plays out in a relatively short period of time.

"We all know by now what hell that sort of health crisis is.

"It just comes along out of the blue and everything else stops because the only thing to do is to drop everything else and pay attention to myriad stuff that needs to be attended to.

"Rita found out last December. That meant Christmas and New Year was a completely different version of how it had been on any year before, and now here we are a year later and she seems to be out of it."

The Oscar winning actor feels blessed that they could afford the best healthcare and added he was in awe of how Rita coped with her ordeal.

In an interview with the Daily Mail newspaper, he said: "Rita and I are lucky because we can afford the best healthcare in the world, we knew that blessing right off, but while it was happening, all I could do was bow down before the courage of my wife."