The cast of ‘Saving Private Ryan’ almost threw in the towel: “The worst experience of my life”
Before filming began on the 1998 war epic, director Steven Spielberg sent his cast members to a gruelling boot camp.
Realism sometimes requires real sacrifices. In Saving Private Ryan, Steven Spielberg wanted the D‑Day invasion to look as authentic as possible, so he brought in Captain Dale Dye of the U.S. Marine Corps. Dye put the cast through a boot‑camp-style training program in a wooded area in Hatfield, England. He treated them like actual soldiers - to the point that a number of actors nearly walked off the production (via Yahoo).
“You owe it to these people” - Hanks’ clarion cry to Saving Private Ryan cast
After just three days of training, several cast members asked to quit, prompting Tom Hanks, one of the movie’s stars, to alert Spielberg about the growing frustration. According to Dye, Hanks addressed his fellow actors directly, telling them: “You owe it to these people you’re representing on film to get this right. And in order to get it right, you’ve got to experience some of what they experienced.”
The actors ate the same rations soldiers received, slept on the ground, and woke up to Dye barking orders. He’d punish them with push‑ups or squats, and when it rained, they’d be soaked to the bone - only for Dye to make them crawl through the mud like real infantrymen. Actor Giovanni Ribisi recalled that they had to march several miles a day, hauling about 45 pounds of gear and “getting about three hours of sleep”.
“Forced to be ‘method’”
Edward Burns described the Saving Private Ryan boot camp as “the worst experience of my life“. Burns’ co-star Adam Goldberg added, “We were forced to be ‘method’, whether we wanted to or not. The only way I could get through it was to shut myself down and become this soldier.” For his part, Saving Private Ryan actor Tom Sizemore recalled: “Just because I had to act like a soldier, why did I have to be a soldier?”
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