Christ (Jim Caviezel, left) attends the Last Supper in "The Passion of the Christ."
Posted on Sat, Feb. 21, 2004
Stefano Paltera – AP
Jim Caviezel appears as vastly different characters, Jesus Christ and golfer Bobby Jones, in films being released this year. Says the actor, "I look for redemption, not necessarily in the characters I play, but in the story... I think people are naturally good, whether they’re religious or not."
The man in Christ's shoes
A man of quiet faith, the star of 'The Passion of the Christ' talks about his work and his ethics
By LAWRENCE TOPPMAN
Charlotte Observer
He's 33 years old, his initials are J.C., he can survive being hit by lightning, he shares Christian beliefs without force-feeding them to strangers. His pale eyes seem to carry the misery of the world, set deep in a gentle, thoughtful face.
So if you're a director about to film "The Passion of the Christ" in 2002, how could you not hire Jim Caviezel? He'd be everything you needed -- except a movie star.
At the time, he'd had significant roles in overlooked films: "The Thin Red Line," "Ride With the Devil," "Angel Eyes." He'd had modest hits in "Frequency" and "The Count of Monte Cristo," but nobody'd asked him to carry a picture. Then Mel Gibson handed him the title role in "The Passion of the Christ." After it opens Wednesday, public attention may be this private man's cross to bear.
He was in Charlotte this week promoting the film to an association of religious broadcasters, and he submitted with quiet, resigned politeness to interviews. Fatigue etched his otherwise unlined face during our chat, the last of them.
He entered a meeting room at the Westin Hotel with the angular poise of a basketball player, which he was as a teenager in Washington state. (A foot injury kept him from pursuing it.) He likes auto racing; he drove the pace car for the 1992 Indy 500 and came to Charlotte from the Daytona race. So he wore blue jeans, black work boots, a logo-filled white-and-green NASCAR jacket, and a black cap with "The Passion of the Christ" on the front and "International Battery" on the sides.
Caviezel -- it's a Romansch name from Switzerland, pronounced "Kuh-VEE-zul" -- prefers not to talk about his personal life. (He's been married six years to a high school teacher.) He spoke happily about the experience of filming and the way his faith affects his choices. Here's some of what he said:
Winning the role
"Initially, I was supposed to be (meeting) for a surfing movie, with Steve McEveety as producer. Then Mel showed up, and the conversation did a complete 180 to `The Passion of the Christ.' I suddenly realized what was up and said, `You want me to play Jesus, don't you?' He said yes."I felt both terrified and good about it, because I was saying yes to someone who would make the story of the gospels real, who'd stay right with Christian doctrine. If I wanted to do an allegory, which can be great, I'd do `Lord of the Rings,' which is basically the same story. Then Mel talked about doing it in dead languages, Aramaic, old Hebrew and Latin; I had to get my mind around that.
"Mel Gibson didn't hire me because I was a believer; he was quoted as saying he saw `The Thin Red Line' and wanted me after that. Mel hired Jews and Muslims on the film, atheists too. He hired people because they were great at what they did."
Suffering for the project
"I threw my shoulder out, and from that point, it felt like I was struggling to get up the hill every day. I got hypothermia, which feels like sticking your whole body in a bucket of ice. It's hard to breathe, you can't digest food properly, you're losing massive amounts of weight -- not the good kind -- and you have a migraine headache. You're on a thousand-foot cliff (for the Golgotha scene) with 30-knot winds coming through you like knives through your skin. You can't put heaters too close, or it melts the latex (makeup). You see people in parkas and hats, and you're in a loincloth. Athletes call this going into a zone. It's not in your head; everything operates in another area, here. (He touches his heart.)
"I'd sleep four hours, then go into an eight-hour makeup session where I had to grab a pole and squat; you can't sit, because makeup will stick to you. Sometimes I had to sleep in the stuff, and they'd throw powder on me to preserve it. Meanwhile, I itched like I had a sunburn all over. Mel would walk by and say, `Jim, you're the world's biggest pizza.'
"You know, many times when I'm praying, I feel like I'm talking to myself. You question yourself all the time, question your faith. But hanging on that cross on the set, when I was saying `My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?,' those words felt real to me."
The lightning incident
"People saw fire coming out of my ears. About three seconds before, you know it's going to hit you. There's absolute silence in the eye of the storm. Then it felt like someone took his hands and hit my ears with massive force."I had pink-red static in my eyes for about seven seconds. Then I could hear Mel screaming, `What the blankety-blank happened? Makeup! Hair!' I looked like I'd been to see Don King's stylist. I felt like, if it had hit me like it should have, it would have just blown my heart out. And I looked upward and said, `What -- you didn't like that take?' "
How faith affects his work
"I don't force my spirituality on anyone. When I did `Monte Cristo,' we talked about (having Dantes say) `God will give me justice.' I said, `That's too much.'
"I respect other people's viewpoints. Not all of my friends are religious, and when I get work on something, I don't ask the director, `Are you a Christian?'
"I don't think I could have gotten to the same performance level (in `Passion') without my faith. Because after getting pneumonia and all the other things, when I wanted to quit, I had an answer to `What is this all for?' "
His next job
(Caviezel will appear this year in "Stroke of Genius: The Bobby Jones Story," a film Charlotte's Rick Eldridge helped produce.)
"I was drawn to Rowdy Harrington's script, which was excellent; at the end of the day, I choose good stories to tell. Bobby Jones was one of the greatest golfers of all time, the only one to win a grand slam in one year. And he loved the game for the pureness of it, not money. He never turned pro, and that was peculiar.
"I look at myself and see peculiar facets, too. A part of me says, `Jim, you're cutting yourself out a nice career right now, just shut up about what you believe and cash in. You don't have to be responsible.' We hear celebrities say all the time, `I'm not your kid's role model.' But that's a lot of crap.
"I believe in team sports, in covering the other guy's back. That's eccentric now, but that's how I was raised, and Bobby Jones had that attitude. He believed his choices affected other people's choices. So do I."
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