Steven Spielberg has been known to be quite an influential director throughout his course in Hollywood. Creating the iconic 1998 movie titled Saving Private Ryan, Spielberg essentially changed the course of war movies alongside Tom Hanks.
There was one actor who wasn’t supposed to be in the film. Revealing how Spielberg convinced the actor to star in his movie by leaving another war movie in that same year, Tom Sizemore was cast as Sgt. Horvath in the movie.
How Steven Spielberg Convinced Tom Sizemore For Saving Private Ryan
In the 1998 movie, there was a character called Sgt. Hovarth who was the right-hand man to Capt. Miller. Well, the character wasn’t planned at all and was only included after Tom Sizemore was attached to the role.
The story of how Sizemore came to be in this role is quite a tale to hear. The actor was actually attached to another war movie titled The Thin Red Line, starring Sean Penn and Adrien Brody. Although Sizemore had a more prominent role in the other movie, he chose to work with Steven Spielberg instead because of the locations that the Jurassic Park director was going to shoot in. In an interview via The Los Angeles Times, the actor talked about how Steven Spielberg convinced him to the film.
“He came right out and said, ‘Do you want to go to Australia with Terry Malick or do you want to come to Great Britain and Ireland with me and Tom Hanks?’ And I told him I wanted to go to Great Britain and Ireland.”
This isn’t the only wondrous story about the movie. With the amount of success that Saving Private Ryan garnered, Steven Spielberg wasn’t sure whether his film would be a success or not.
Steven Spielberg Wasn’t Sure About The Film’s Success
With Saving Private Ryan being a war movie, Spielberg wasn’t sure how the film would turn out to be. With Tom Hanks in the lead role, Spielberg told the Los Angeles Times about how he had not anticipated the success that the movie would revel in today.
“I didn’t anticipate the success of the movie. In very early screenings, certain associates and other people in my life were saying that I made it too tough. I feared that almost nobody would see it because the word of mouth would spread quickly after the first 25 minutes.”
Well, the 1998 movie became one of the most iconic movies in Hollywood. The movie was so well received that veterans had to leave the movie theaters because they had PTSD effects from the war. Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan received a high rating of 8.6/10 on IMDB and 94% on Rotten Tomatoes.
Saving Private Ryan is available to stream on Prime Video in the U.S.
Source: The Los Angeles Times
