The reason Tom Hanks was nervous about ‘Saving Private Ryan’: “I was really reluctant to do it”
Saving Private Ryan isn’t just one of the best Tom Hanks movies – it’s one of the best movies ever made, period.
The 1998 World War II epic was a revelation upon release, wowing audiences with its incredible battle sequences and tugging at their heartstrings with its story of a group of soldiers trying desperately to locate one Private to bring him home after his three brothers are killed in action.
The film was nominated for ten Oscars and won five, including ‘Best Director’ for its iconic helmer Steven Spielberg. Fascinatingly, though, Hanks was initially reluctant to make the picture.
The Hanks/Spielberg creative partnership has been responsible for some of the best movies and prestige TV shows of the past 25 years. Spielberg has directed Hanks in five films, including Catch Me If You Can, The Terminal, Bridge of Spies, and The Post. However, they also spearheaded the groundbreaking HBO miniseries Band of Brothers and The Pacific, in addition to the recent Masters of the Air on AppleTV+.
Indeed, these fastidiously observed war shows illustrate that both Hanks and Spielberg are keenly interested in American history. Interestingly, this shared fascination with diving into the often harrowing yet also heroic stories of brave figures from the past was the foundation of the friendship between the two Hollywood icons, which started long before they worked together for the first time on Saving Private Ryan.
In 2015, the two men attended the New York Film Festival for the premiere of Bridge of Spies and spoke at a Q&A session about how they first became friendly. Hanks revealed, “When we got to know each other as guys who live in the same part of town and had kids all about the same age, operating in the same non-professional circles, we developed a language that was all about how we read history for pleasure. We were constantly reading biographies or histories, searching out the documentaries we’d never seen.”
Whenever they crossed paths, Hanks and Spielberg would quiz each other about what books they had on their bedside tables, so it made perfect sense to them that their first collaboration would be “based on the vision of history we never cease reading about.” Their friendship then deepened in the early 1990s when Spielberg made Schindler’s List, and Hanks shot Philadelphia. Spielberg smiled, “Before we all took off for our movies, Tom cut all his hair off, so he brought his family over on the weekends to our beach house. And I’ve got videos of Tom with no hair and a baseball cap on.”
According to Spielberg, the two history buffs were always looking for a project to collaborate on, but nothing seemed right until they independently read Robert Rodat’s Saving Private Ryan script. Spielberg claimed, “We called each other on the phone at the same moment and decided to do it together” before adding, “That was the one time that he cast me, and I cast him.”
What separated Saving Private Ryan from other war films at the time was its determination to strip away any romanticism attached to combat. Spielberg’s brutal depiction of the Normandy landings immediately changed the standard for war cinema, with the opening sequence placing audiences directly into the chaos, fear and confusion faced by the soldiers storming Omaha Beach. Veterans praised the film for capturing details that many previous Hollywood productions had either softened or ignored entirely.
That realism extended beyond the visuals. Hanks understood that Captain Miller needed to feel like an ordinary man burdened by impossible responsibility rather than a traditional action hero.
His restrained performance grounded the film emotionally, giving audiences someone human to cling to amid the relentless violence. It’s part of the reason the film continues to resonate decades later, standing not just as a technical masterpiece but as one of the most affecting portraits of sacrifice ever committed to screen.
In response, Hanks confessed that the process wasn’t quite that simple. He said, “You’re giving me a little too much credit. I wasn’t quite that prescient. I think I did some groundwork to find out if you were open to the phone call.” However, Hanks didn’t admit in 2015 that he initially had cold feet about taking the plunge and working with Spielberg on the film – because he didn’t want it to affect their friendship.
Around the time of the film’s release in ’98, Hanks told Deseret News, “I’ve seen friendships that ended because of a bad moviemaking experience, and I was really reluctant to do it because of that. Sometimes, I’m just astounded that I know this great guy, and that I’m friends with him.”
In truth, Hollywood stars, the size and stature of Hanks and Spielberg, probably don’t have many people in their lives who are purely friends and not also work colleagues. So, deciding to cross that boundary and begin working with his pal was a big deal for Hanks. In fact, he was positive it was a risk to their relationship, so the project they chose had to be worthy of taking that chance.
He soon realised Saving Private Ryan was the right project, though, and mused, “We would have regretted not making this film. This was really important for both of us.”
