In a career which often saw him play characters with a streak of ruthlessness, it was as a soldier with a heart of gold in Saving Private Ryan that he truly excelled
Perfect casting is something that happens rarely in the career of any actor – starring or supporting – but it happened for Tom Sizemore in the late 90s, just as he was getting to be known for amoral tough guy roles, but also for drug abuse in his personal life. Steven Spielberg offered him the part of Sgt Mike Horvath in Saving Private Ryan, and told him that he would be given a drug test at the end of every day of principal photography and his scenes would be re-shot with someone else if he failed even one.
Sizemore stayed clean and played the tough, beefy, courageous soldier who is to be the loyal subordinate of Capt John Miller, played by Tom Hanks, Miller being the high-school teacher in civilian life who in 1944 is entrusted with the almost hopeless, quixotic mission of rescuing a certain private in occupied France on compassionate grounds because all three of this man’s brothers had been killed in action. All the tricks and mannerisms that Sizemore had been cultivating for his tough guy crime roles, his faintly sweaty and pop-eyed relish for action and violence, his disdain for the rulebook and streak of ruthlessness, all these character traits were reversed and redeemed and even ennobled by his persona as a dedicated military man.
He was a badass, sure, but now he was a badass for Uncle Sam, fighting the Nazis. Sizemore was the friend and confidant of Hanks’s thoughtful officer, and ready to pull a gun on any of his platoon who presumed to question his captain’s orders. Of that platoon: Jeremy Davies, Barry Pepper, Giovanni Ribisi, Adam Goldberg, Vin Diesel, Edward Burns and Sizemore, perhaps it’s Vin Diesel who’s gone on to the movie big time, but at the time it was Sizemore who was the standout, because he had what he had never had before and was never really to have again – a heart of gold.
