Hollywood good guy Tom Hanks sends touching letter and gift to bullied boy called Corona

HOLLYWOOD star and all-round good guy Tom Hanks has sent a touching letter and a very meaningful gift to a young Australian lad, who wrote to tell him he was being bullied because of his name – Corona.

Eight-year-old Gold Coast schoolboy Corona De Vries penned a letter to the actor after he and his wife Rita Wilson both went down with Covid-19 while in Queensland and spent several weeks recovering in hospital.

Corona asked if the couple were OK and told the Oscar winner he liked his name, but that kids at his school were calling him “coronavirus” and it made him feel “sad and angry.”

Hanks replied with a letter beginning “Dear Friend Corona” and words of encouragement he bashed out on a typewriter.

“Your letter made my wife and I feel so wonderful! Thank you for being such a good friend – friends make friends feel good when they are down,” he told him.

“You know, you are the only person I’ve ever known to have the name Corona – like the ring around the sun, a crown,” he added.

“You’ve got a friend in me!”, Hanks hand wrote at the end in a reference to his role as Woody in the Toy Story films.

The star also sent the lad a Corona-branded typewriter he had used during his quarantine in Australia, saying: “I thought this typewriter would suit you.”

“Ask a grown-up how it works. And use it to write me back.”