Tom Hanks grew clearly emotional as he recalled the loneliness of his “vagabond” childhood on Desert Island Discs.

Hanks had to take a breather when discussing the impact of hearing one of his music choices, Strauss’ Also Sprach Zarathustra, the theme to 2001: A Space Odyssey, on him as a teenager on the BBC Radio 4 show, in which guests choose their favorite eight songs to take to a desert island.

He told host Kirsty Young: “This was the ‘Wow’ moment of my life going from kid trying to figure out what’s interesting in this life to young man yearning to be an artist.

“I started asking myself…how do I find the vocabulary for what’s rattling around in my head. Not long after I started going to the American Conservatory Theatre by myself to see plays I had no idea even existed.”

When Young asked Hanks, 59, about the feelings in his mind, he took a long pause and seemed to grow emotional. “What have you done to me?” he asked an apologetic Young, before addding: “No, it’s all right, because I put too much thought into this list. What it was, it was the vocabulary of loneliness.”

The actor revealed that his first marriage, to actress Samantha Lewes, at the age of 21, was to ‘quell the loneliness.’ They had two children, Colin and Elizabeth.

He continued: “Having a kid at 21 was the greatest thing that ever happened to me because I didn’t smoke pot. I didn’t do drugs, I was not a party boy.”

“I don’t think I’ll ever be lonely any more, that’s how I felt when I met my wife.”

In honor of his first date with Wilson at the band’s movie, Hanks chose Talking Heads’ Once In A Lifetime.

As a seven-year-old, he shared a room with his brother and father and sought a location where “I won’t be alone, I won’t be lonely, instead I’ll feel content” thus he also chose the Beatles’ song There’s A Place.

Hanks made Young chuckle, among other things, when he recounted his insensitive re-writing of the screenplay for Sleepless In Seattle, in which he portrays a widower whose son seeks to find him a new bride.

Hanks claimed the original screenplay had his character “flummoxed by this crisis” in a moment when his kid doesn’t want him to depart on a romantic break with his new girlfriend.

‘I said (to writers Nora and Delia Ephron), ‘You guys are out of your mind. You know what a dad would say: Hey kid, I’m going away for the week because I want to get laid.

‘We put a version of that in the movie.’