“Saving Private Ryan” is easily one of the best war films of all time, making it into our top 10. Part of how it made history was a top-tier cast, including a cameo from Nathan Fillion. Tom Hanks, as Captain John Miller, is scouring the front looking for a James Ryan, but Fillion isn’t who he’s looking for. It’s a quick moment in a nearly three hour movie, but it is a striking one.
Following Captain Miller’s journey to find Private James Francis Ryan (Matt Damon), the movie doesn’t shy away from the horrors of war. “Saving Private Ryan” casts the storming of the beach at Normandy as its opening set piece, as Miller’s squad moves inland. The first location Miller searches to resolve his mission isn’t far from Normandy, and it’s still in France, but Miller’s mission can’t be that easy and his squad loses its first soldier on the search for someone that’s not even the right guy. The mix-up results in Fillion’s cameo as James Frederick Ryan (he’s credited as “Minnesota Ryan” at the end) and it’s an early watershed moment that makes us question what the final cost will be to save just one person, and whether it’s all worth it.
The rest of the film follows Miller as he tries to get to the right James before he becomes the fourth and final Ryan brother to die in combat. While it isn’t the most historically accurate war movie, it paved the way for the next generation of films in this genre, including “1917,” “Dunkirk,” and 2022’s “All Quiet on the Western Front.”
Stephen Spielberg helped Nathan Fillion cry on cue
As part of playing the wrong James Ryan, Nathan Fillion had to cry on cue for both his audition and the final scene. The actor confirmed in an interview with SiriusXM Radio in 2020 that he could do it, and that it was something he practiced on the bus ride to school. When he auditioned for “Saving Private Ryan,” Fillion’s biggest role to date was on the soap opera “One Life to Live.” A job on a soap will probably include plenty of crying on cue, boosting Fillion’s abilities.
“All I had to do was come in and cry,” the actor told Mike Rowe on his podcast “The Way I Heard It” in 2024. “Here I was in London, and here it is, it’s actually important, and I was dry as a popcorn fart.”
Fillion had developed a backstory in his head for Minnesota Ryan, in order to help him connect with the character and make the crying a bit easier. Director Stephen Spielberg helped him finesse the big moment, changing a handful of details and helping Fillion get into the right headspace for the scene. It may not be the role most audiences remember Fillion for, but a top five Spielberg movie (as we ranked it) remains a big deal to have on your filmography.