Nicholas Sparks names his five favourite movies of all time
The American novelist and screenwriter Nicolas Sparks has a prolific career, having published 23 novels (all of which have been New York Times bestsellers and two non-fiction books. His most notable is arguably The Notebook, which was, of course, adapted into a film starring Ryan Gosling.
Along with The Notebook, another ten of Sparks’ novels have been made into films, including Message in a Bottle and A Walk to Remember. But how about Sparks’ favourite films? Well, he once named them, fortunately, in a feature with Rotten Tomatoes, so let’s take a closer look at them now.
First up for Sparks is everyone’s favourite aquatic terror, Steven Spielberg’s 1975 classic Jaws, in which Roy Scheider starred as a police chief alongside Richard Dreyfuss’s marine biologist and Robert Shaw’s shark hunter as they all go after a man-eating great white shark. Sparks said the first time he saw Jaws, “I must have been nine years old. Of course, at the time, it was the most terrifying film I’d ever seen. It kept me awake for days. It kept me afraid of the ocean for a while.”
Another classic that connected with Sparks is Robert Zemeckis’ 1994 comedy-drama Forrest Gump, which starred Tom Hanks in the famous titular role, adapted from Winston Groom’s 1986 novel of the same name. Sparks particularly enjoyed the film because he “just loved the interplay of putting him back into actual historical footage of meeting the presidents, and at the time, it was so much fun to see that play out on screen. It captured entire eras and major issues, everything from racism in the south to the horror of the Vietnam War to AIDS toward the end.”
Elsewhere, a beloved Western also finds its place on Sparks’ list, but it is not one from the Golden Age as we might expect, but 1992’s Unforgiven, which was directed by Western legend Clint Eastwood, who also starred the film alongside Morgan Freeman. “The Western genre had died, and then in walks this guy who’d done that era and was a major star,” Spark said of the film. “How entirely different from any other Western we’ve ever seen. And you care for this guy who spends the entire film telling people he’s changed. He’s not the guy he once was. And then, just when you care about this character, you realize he’s the same guy he always was.”
On a much lighter note, one of the greatest children’s animated films of all time is also admired by Sparks. Toy Story changed the face of cinema forever in 1995 with its touching story bringing toys to life and Woody and Buzz into everyone’s hearts. “Wildly original in concept, in creation, in everything about it,” Sparks said. “And it is a kids’ movie that resonated with adults because you cover things like betrayal or jealousy, all set within this small, childlike world. It had me in stitches.”
Finally, Sparks’ favourite films list is rounded off by Dirty Dancing, the 1987 romantic drama with some of the best dancing moves ever committed to film. It tells of a young woman (Jennifer Grey) who falls in love with her dance instructor (Patrick Swayze). Sparks said of the beloved movie, “There was something striking about how all of that worked together in a film that just made you feel good and want to dance and want to take someone to see, and then, how many years later, that film still holds up.”
Nicholas Sparks’ five favourite movies of all time:
- Jaws (Steven Spielberg, 1975)
- Forrest Gump (Robert Zemeckis, 1994)
- Unforgiven (Clint Eastwood, 1992)
- Toy Story (John Lasseter, 1995)
- Dirty Dancing (Eleanor Bergstein, 1987)
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