Comedian Bill Maher told how he was "like a puddle" after watching Saving Private Ryan for the first time because an actor reminded him of his late father.
Director Steven Spielberg's 1998 World War II epic, which was set during the Normandy invasion, followed a U.S. Captain, played by Tom Hanks, who had to find and take home Private James Ryan after the rest of his brothers were killed in action.
Matt Damon played the younger Ryan and when the character was seen as an older man he was played by late actor Harrison Richard Young.
Maher said that watching the movie in the cinema was an emotional experience for him, because the older Ryan made him think of his own father William Aloysius Maher Jr, who was also in World War II and had died just a few years before the film came out.
Speaking on the Club Random with Bill Maher podcast, the comedian said: "My favorite movie of all time, and that's partly because it's personal, because I mean, the guy who plays Ryan, the movie opens with him as an older man, was exactly my father, who was in World War II, practically in that campaign.
"So when I saw it in the theater, I mean, to say I was like a puddle... it was only about four years after my father died and it was like, you know, I have never had that experience in a movie theater."
Maher, 68, said that even the older Ryan's clothes reminded him of his father, as director Spielberg "put him in the exact sort of shirt my father would have worn" at that time.
"That generation just is, I'm sure the kids are tired of hearing that they are the greatest generation, but they kind of were," the star added.
Saving Private Ryan – which also starred Edward Burns, Tom Sizemore, Adam Goldberg, Barry Pepper, Giovanni Ribisi and Vin Diesel – was a huge hit, winning over theater-goers and becoming the second highest grossing film of 1998.
According to Box Office Mojo, it made a whopping $481,840,909 at the worldwide box office, putting it in second place that year behind the Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck film Armageddon, which raked in $553,709,788.
It also scooped a raft of accolades, with Spielberg winning the Best Director gong at both the Academy Awards and the Golden Globes.
Newsweek has emailed representatives for Maher for comment.
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