The only ‘Saving Private Ryan’ actor everyone liked: “There were some unpleasant characters”
When the entire intention behind the movie was to guarantee the utmost levels of realism and authenticity, it was inevitable that tensions would occasionally flare during the making of Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan.
After all, the cast was hired and tasked to be completely believable as a ragtag group of soldiers deployed behind enemy lines on a rescue mission they didn’t have a personal stake in, exacerbating the dwindling sense of morale when they’d already been to hell and back to serve their country.
Apart from Matt Damon, obviously. To ensure a palpable sense of resentment between the actor and his co-stars, he was the only one granted exemption from the boot camp everyone else was forced to attend before shooting. Spielberg’s move to foster real-life hostility was shrewd, and Damon’s colleagues didn’t forget it.
As for the boot camp itself? Military advisor Dale Dye put the group through their paces in much the same way World War II troops would be trained before they were shipped overseas, an experience so torturous that everyone was ready to stage a mutiny and quit on the spot until Tom Hanks stepped in to diffuse the tensions, smooth things over, and ensure they didn’t walk away.
Needless to say, the intense nature of their preparation and Spielberg’s constant push to make Saving Private Ryan as realistic as possible meant that it wasn’t exactly a lighthearted, happy-go-lucky production. Several of the actors were utterly miserable, and they didn’t even try to hide those feelings. The background players definitely picked up, although there was one constant ray of sunshine.
Sam Ellis, who played a minor role as Private Hastings, remembers questioning Spielberg’s mandate for factuality when he spotted the performers wearing wetsuits under their fatigues during the D-Day landings. “I said, ‘I thought this was going to be the most authentic war film ever made?'” he recalled asking, per The Telegraph. “I don’t think they were wearing wetsuits.”
Still, being protected from the elements did lead to the memorable sight of “Tom Hanks walking on set and kind of bouncing around because they made you feel slightly bionic.” Befitting his reputation as modern cinema’s pre-eminent everyman, it’s hardly a shock that the two-time Academy Award winner was about the only actor who didn’t make any enemies.
“There were some unpleasant characters on the movie,” Paul Hickey admitted. “He absolutely was not one of them. He was an absolute gentleman, as was Spielberg.” In fact, Hanks had a habit of appearing out of nowhere to give the bit-part actors brandy and whiskey to help warm them up when the exhausting Omaha Beach sequence left them shivering from spending so long in the cold and wet.
It may not be surprising that Hanks was singled out as the nicest guy on the Saving Private Ryan set and the only one of the main actors who didn’t rub anybody else the wrong way, but even the day players and extras remember it fondly to this day.
