The “terrible” first-time actor who thought they’d ruined ‘Saving Private Ryan’: “Now I’m even worse”
While there’s definitely a place for star-studded war movies, as the likes of Battle of Britain and A Bridge Too Far can attest, Saving Private Ryan would never work if the cast were overflowing with big names.
Obviously, names don’t get much bigger than Tom Hanks, but he was the exception. Steven Spielberg populated the rest of the ensemble with veteran character actors, newcomers, and even the odd future star like Nathan Fillion or a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it appearance from Andrew Scott.
Of the eight soldiers sent to save Matt Damon’s title character from the same fate as his brothers, Hanks and Tom Sizemore had more film credits than the other six combined. Jeremy Davies had been in six features, Adam Goldberg had been in eight, Giovanni Ribisi had been in nine, Barry Pepper had been in two, and Vin Diesel had only one credited role in a feature.
That still made most of them relative veterans compared to Edward Burns, though, who’d never been in a movie helmed by someone other than himself. His first two pictures were The Brothers McMullen and She’s the One, which he wrote, produced, directed, and starred in, with his debut costing $25,000 to make.
His sophomore effort was vastly more expensive at $3 million, but considering Saving Private Ryan‘s D-Day sequence alone cost four times as much, Burns was understandably daunted at working on his first proper production, especially when Hanks’ words of encouragement had the opposite effect after he was told, “I’ve seen you act before, and this isn’t acting” during his first day on set.
“I’m scared,” he admitted. “It’s my first real acting job. And I look across the field, and there’s Steven behind the camera. And I hear ‘Action’ and I have the first line. And I take two steps and I turn and I don’t see Captain Miller, I see Tom fucking Hanks. And then it kind of hits me.”
“I try to deliver the first line, and I look, my hands are shaking and my voice is cracking,” Burns recalled. “It’s terrible. I hear ‘Cut! Let’s do it again’. Second take. Action. Now I’m even worse. Now it’s in my head and I’m terrible. And then Hanks is like, ‘Dude. Chill out. Alright?’ You can do this’. Third take, another disaster. Now Tom’s a little bit concerned.”
Having enjoyed the luxury of uninhibited creative freedom on his first two films as the guy in charge, Burns struggled to get to grips with Saving Private Ryan on his first day, so it’s easy to see why he thought Spielberg was going to fire everyone when he refused to offer them feedback for two weeks.
He eventually got over his nerves and finished the scene, but not without noting how “the interesting thing is that the scene does not make it into the final cut of the movie.” He didn’t ruin the whole movie, but based on his first-day nerves, it sounds like he might have ruined the first thing he shot.
