Noah Wyle Passed on ‘Saving Private Ryan’. Matt Damon Credits Robin Williams for Getting Him the Part.

Spielberg had already passed on Damon for Private Ryan. Then Robin Williams walked him and Ben Affleck across Boston Common to meet the director, and everything changed.

Damon had sent in an audition tape for Saving Private Ryan and hadn’t been cast. What put him back in the running was the face-to-face introduction Robin Williams engineered.

Robin Williams takes the stage at MTV’s Total Request Live in New York City’s Times Square Studios in April 2006. Photo by Peter Kramer / Getty Images.

The two were rehearsing Good Will Hunting in Boston when Spielberg came to town to shoot Amistad nearby. Williams took Damon and Affleck to meet him, and Spielberg recognized Damon’s face without placing it. When Damon mentioned Courage Under Fire, it clicked.

Spielberg told him he’d said to his wife that Damon was exactly the kind of person he wanted for Private Ryan, but that he was too thin. Damon had dropped 40 pounds to play a heroin addict in that film. Seeing him in person changed Spielberg’s mind.

Damon shared the story on Outstanding Screenplays, crediting Williams both for getting Good Will Hunting made and for the introduction that landed him the war epic. Noah Wyle, who turned the role down over his commitment to ER, has since said Damon was right for the part.

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