Who played the title character in "Saving Private Ryan"?

Matt Damon played the title character, Private James Francis Ryan, in Saving Private Ryan.

Steven Spielberg’s 1998 World War II film follows Captain John Miller, played by Tom Hanks, and a squad of soldiers sent behind enemy lines to find Ryan. Ryan’s three brothers have been killed in combat, and military officials order that he be brought home to his mother. Although Damon’s character is the film’s central objective, he does not appear until relatively late in the story, which can make the answer easy to confuse with Hanks’s much more prominent role.

The film’s title refers to the rescue mission rather than the actor who dominates most of the screen time. Damon was already known for Good Will Hunting, which he co-wrote with Ben Affleck, but Saving Private Ryan helped establish him as a major star. The film was released in 1998 and received widespread acclaim for its depiction of the Normandy invasion and the human cost of war.