Tom Hanks has sent a letter and a Corona brand typewriter to an Australian boy who wrote to him about being bullied over his name, Corona.

Corona De Vries, an eight-year-old from the Gold Coast, wrote to the Hollywood star after he and his wife, Rita, had spent more than two weeks in quarantine after testing positive for COVID-19 there.

The boy had written to Hanks saying: “I heard on the news you and your wife had caught the coronavirus,” Channel 7 News reported.

“Are you OK?”

Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson during their coronavirus quarantine in Australia. Photo: Twitter

He said he loved his name but people at school called him the coronavirus, which made him “sad and angry”.

“Your letter made my wife and I feel so wonderful!” Hanks replied in a letter typed on a Corona typewriter which he had taken to the Gold Coast.

“You know, you are the only person I’ve ever known to have the name Corona – like the ring around the sun, a crown,” the double Oscar winner wrote to the boy.

“I thought this typewriter would suit you,” an image of the letter aired by Channel 7 News showed.

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

Hanks handwrote at the end: “P.S. You got a friend in ME!”

-AAP