10 Subtle Instances Of Method Acting You Didn't Even Know About

4. Matt Damon Had Lighter Military Training Than Everyone Else To Make Him A Convincing Rookie Everyone Resents

When making Saving Private Ryan, Steven Spielberg wanted to create a different kind of war movie. He wanted to capture the grim reality of warfare; the hell those soldiers would've gone through.

And so he set about putting his actors through hell too, enrolling them in a gruelling 10-day boot camp led by a retired Marine who'd only call them by their character names. They learned survival techniques, underwent weapons training, and their bodies were wrecked, with Edward Burns citing it as the worst experience of his life.

The whole cast was involved, except for Matt Damon. Not only could he not have the same level of training as the others because he was a rookie, but even more so because Spielberg actually wanted the rest of the cast to feel a sense of resentment towards him, since they'd have to spend a lot of the movie risking their lives and searching for this one kid.