Director Steven Spielberg Made Sure Matt Damon Was Resented By The Saving Private Ryan Cast

In Steven Spielberg's 1998 war film "Saving Private Ryan," a poor beleaguered American mother saw her four sons — Sean, Peter, Daniel, and James — shipped off to fight during World War II. Not too long thereafter, the former three were killed in action. James Ryan (Matt Damon), the survivor, was stationed far away and was incommunicado. The U.S. Army, wanting to spare Mother Ryan the trauma of four dead sons (three was enough), assigned Captain John Miller (Tom Hanks) to locate and rescue Private James Ryan and bring him home.

The bulk of "Saving Private Ryan" is told from the perspective of Captain Miller and his platoon. As they trek closer and closer to Private Ryan, their mission becomes more and more dangerous, and it won't be long before some of them begin getting killed in action. As one might imagine, Miller and his surviving platoon members greatly resent Private Ryan when they finally find him. They sacrificed their lives for ... this guy? Why does he get to survive while so many other soldiers die?

As it so happens, the cast of "Saving Private Ryan" similarly resented Damon on the set, even if there was no death involved. Namely, the other actors had to go through rigorous boot camp training, and Damon didn't. 

Captain Miller's platoon was stocked with notable actors like Adam Goldberg, Giovanni Ribisi, Vin Diesel, Barry Pepper, Edward Burns, Tom Sizemore, and Jeremy Davies, and they all hated Damon by the time they had to film scenes with him. Steven Spielberg, it seems, let the entire cast known that Damon didn't have to go through boot camp like the rest of them did. Damon recalled the resentment in a 2023 interview with GQ.

Because they were playing WWII-era soldiers, Spielberg had his main cast undergo period-appropriate basic training, complete with the grueling hours, a bad diet, and physically laborious ropes courses. This was massively difficult and not very fun. It's so difficult that the people who go through it tend to bond over the shared struggle. Damon, meanwhile, got to relax at home. It seemed a little unfair to the cast. Why wasn't Damon struggling and bonding? It turns out, being a little unfair — and preventing friendship — was Spielberg's modus operandi. Damon said:

"[Spielberg] made me not go to boot camp so that the other guys would resent me. They all went through this experience, and they all bonded, but because I was the character they were looking for, and they resented this guy that they were risking their lives to go find, Steven purposefully kept me away from them."

The GQ interview pointed to a scene late in "Saving Private Ryan" when the main characters have all located the Private, and he refuses to return home with them, eager to keep fighting. He doesn't care about the sacrifices they made, and still feels that dying in combat is somehow heroic. In that scene, the rest of the cast stares daggers into Matt Damon, furious that he would suggest anything outside their life-threatening mission. That moment couldn't have happened without Spielberg's clever Damon-isolation/demonization ploy.

Of course, no one resented Spielberg, even though he also got to take it easy. Spielberg revealed a few more details about the boot camp in a 2012 interview with Roger Ebert, saying that he didn't have to go through it for a second. It was his privilege as a director.

In the Ebert interview, Spielberg also noted that the boot camp, while grueling, wasn't nearly as hard for his actors as it was for real soldiers. Real boot camp, he said, generally takes four months. His cast only had to endure it for a mere six days. He opted out because, well, "One of the gratuities about being a director is that you can volunteer yourself out of difficult details." 

Even though it was only six days, the actors felt the punch. In a 2016 interview with Yahoo! News, actor Edward Burns said that boot camp "was the worst experience of my life." Tom Sizemore, in a profile from the Independent in 1998, also hated the experience, explaining that he and his co-stars had to train under a real Marine named Dale Dye. Sizemore said: "They try to reprogram you. They try to take out parts of your personality, bring out your aggressive nature, make you a killing machine." He didn't like Dye calling the cast members "turds." Rough stuff.

Damon noted during a 1998 interview on "The View" that his co-stars even began playing a particular card game in boot camp, and he was left out of that. Dye was also present at that interview, though, and noted Damon did still receive soldierly instructions, even if he wasn't part of the boot camp. He did, after all, have to know how to respond to authority and handle a gun. 

"Saving Private Ryan" was nominated for 11 Academy Awards, including Best Picture, and ultimate won Oscars for Best Director, Best Cinematography, Best Editing, Best Sound, and Best Sound Editing. Its Best Picture loss to "Shakespeare In Love" was considered a minor scandal.