Steven Spielberg Never Writes a Movie to Fit the Actor
Steven Spielberg has worked with several superstars during his decades-long work in the film industry. But there was one rule he refused to break for any one actor.
Steven Spielberg always puts the script first before the actor
Spielberg once gave a little insight into his thought process for making movies. The director normally didn’t put too much priority over who starred in his movies when developing a project. Instead, Spielberg focused on the story first, and the star second.
“In the old days, when the studio system was more powerful than it ever was — in the golden days of Hollywood, i.e. the 1920s to 1950s, when the studio chiefs dominated the business — they cultivated super stars and they tailored stories for those stars,” Spielberg once told The Economic Times. “My generation has done the opposite, we found good stories and we cast the right people to play the characters and I still work with stars. Tom Hanks did Saving Private Ryan, but he will tell you that he did not come first. It was the script that came through first, Tom was perfect to play Captain Miller. I thought so, he thought so. Likewise, Leonardo DiCaprio was chosen after Catch Me if You Can was scripted. I have never written a story to fit the actor, to fit the icon, I have never done that.”
Steven Spielberg called this actor the experience of his life
Out of all the actors Spielberg has worked with, he rarely pursued one as relentlessly as he pursued Daniel Day-Lewis for Lincoln. Before Day-Lewis’ involvement, Spielberg had been working on developing a Lincoln project for six years. He scripted his own version of the film, which Day-Lewis initially turned down. Years later, Spielberg reworked his Lincoln feature into the version audiences would see in theaters in 2012. When Spielberg shared with Day-Lewis the new script, the actor climbed on board the project after a lot of persuasion.
“I’ve never gone on a campaign before, I pretty much take no for an answer. It’s one of the few times in my entire life where I was not willing to accept that answer,” Spielberg once told Deadline.
And it seemed working alongside Day-Lewis more than lived up to the filmmaker’s expectations. So much so Spielberg confided that he never had an experience like it.
“For me, he is like the experience of my career,” Spielberg said. “He was the number one experience of my career, in terms of working with an actor. He transformed himself and became completely unrecognisable. I have never seen that happen before. Also, none of my films have ever had these demands on any actor. But for a movie of this genre, whoever inhabits Abraham Lincoln, needs to become Abraham Lincoln. And Lewis is the only actor who could have pulled it off.”
Steven Spielberg revealed the common thread that links his movies
Spielberg didn’t focus on star-power or themes when it came to making movies. But he shared that he might sub consciously tap into certain themes when making his films.
“My life is about overcoming obstacles that are presented to me. I think that’s the rhythm that we have in common. We share that rhythm in common in overcoming obstacles and that is just one of the tedious pleasures of life — that we have obstacles to overcome,” he said.
Spielberg used two of his earlier films to demonstrate the example.
“But my early films had huge obstacles that were not exactly repeatable in real life, like Sharks or ET,” he said. “One hasn’t landed yet, that’s not going to happen soon, and ET and Close Encounters can go from being a figment of my imagination to a social reality. That hasn’t happened yet. In my earlier films, my obstacles were profound, people had to dig deeper to find the right stuff in order to survive. The obstacles have become more eye level now and become more identifiable.”
