Background and career
James Patrick Caviezel Jr. (; born September 26, 1968) is an American actor. He played Jesus in The Passion of the Christ (2004) and Tim Ballard in Sound of Freedom (2023), and starred as John Reese on the CBS series Person of Interest (2011–2016). He also played Slov in G.I. Jane (1997), Private Witt in The Thin Red Line (1998), Detective John Sullivan in Frequency (2000), Catch in Angel Eyes (2001), and Edmond Dantès in The Count of Monte Cristo (2002).
Caviezel was born in Mount Vernon, Washington, U.S., the son of Margaret (née Lavery), a homemaker and former stage actress, and James Caviezel, a chiropractor. He has a younger brother, Timothy, and three sisters, Ann, Amy, and Erin. He was raised in a Roman Catholic family in Conway, Washington. His surname is Romansh. His father is of Swiss Romansh and Slovak descent, while his mother is Irish American. Caviezel played basketball in high school and at Bellevue College. He had aspirations of playing professionally, but suffered a foot injury in his second year. Caviezel later transferred to the University of Washington, but left before graduating to pursue his acting career.
Caviezel says that at age 19 while watching a movie in a theater, he felt a sense of peace overcome him and that God was asking him to become an actor. After his basketball career ended due to injury, he began acting in plays in Seattle, Washington. He earned his Screen Actors Guild card with a minor role in the 1991 film My Own Private Idaho. He then moved to Los Angeles to pursue a career in acting. When he decided to move, "people thought I was out of my mind," he said. He was offered a scholarship to study acting at New York's Juilliard School in 1993, but he turned it down to portray Warren Earp in the 1994 film Wyatt Earp. He later appeared in episodes of Murder, She Wrote and The Wonder Years, along with a role in G.I. Jane (1997). Caviezel had a breakthrough performance in the 1998 Terrence Malick-directed World War II film The Thin Red Line. He had met with Malick several times before securing the role and had told his wife that if he did not get a role in the film, he intended to quit show business and move back to Washington. He later played Black John, a Missouri bushwhacker, in Ride with the Devil (1999), an American Civil War film. Caviezel was originally cast to play Scott Summers / Cyclops in X-Men (2000), but dropped out because of a scheduling conflict with the film Frequency (2000). He starred in the mainstream films Pay It Forward (2000), Angel Eyes (2001), and The Count of Monte Cristo (2002). In 2000, he played the lead role in Madison, a film about hydroplane racing in Madison, Indiana. The film was completed in 2001, but did not appear in theaters until a limited release in 2005. In 2002, he played a leading role in the film I Am David.
Caviezel was first approached about playing Jesus Christ in The Passion of the Christ through his agent, who told him Mel Gibson and his partner were interested in him for a role in an unrelated screenplay, which he later learned was a cover story. Caviezel met with Gibson in Malibu, and after more than three hours of conversation, Gibson brought up the role of Jesus, which Caviezel accepted. The following day, Gibson called Caviezel to ask if he was sure he wanted the role and told him he may never work in Hollywood again if he accepted the role. Caviezel says he responded, "Each one of us has our own cross to carry — we either pick it up and carry it or we get crushed under the weight of it." During the conversation, Caviezel told Gibson he just realized he was 33 years old and his initials were J.C., to which Gibson responded "you're freaking me out" and hung up the phone. He described the filming of the movie as "torture". During filming in Italy in the winter, he was struck by lightning, scourged by accident, dislocated his shoulder, and suffered from pneumonia and hypothermia during extended filming sessions on the cross in cold, windy conditions. He awoke as early as 2:00 AM for eight-hour makeup sessions which led to skin infections, and headaches because one of his eyes was closed shut. He was accidentally struck during the scourging at the pillar scene because one of the actors playing a Roman soldier missed the wooden board which had been set up behind his back. The real wound it made on his back was then used as a model for the makeup artist. The cross he carried in the film weighed over 150 pounds, and, at one point, Caviezel fell under the weight of it and bit his tongue. His own blood was streaming out of his mouth in one scene which was in the final cut of the movie. He was struck by lightning during the last shot of filming, which was the Sermon on the Mount scene. He recalled, "People started screaming and they said I had fire on both sides of my head and a light around me...I had locked eyes with people and it was very eerie because they made a weird sound – the kind of sound people made when they saw the jet plane run into the World Trade Center. It was a sickening feeling." The lightning strike caused complications for his heart, requiring two surgeries and several years to correct. Asked what part of the film had the greatest effect on him, he said, "I'll be honest with you, there are things that I went through that I can't even talk about." Caviezel said the experience of filming The Passion deepened his faith. During filming, he regularly prayed the Rosary and went to confession. "As a result of playing this part, I have become even more passionate about the Way of the Cross. It is about Our Lord’s sacrifice for mankind, for our sins, bringing us back to God, and it’s love that did this." Of the controversy that erupted over The Passion, including accusations of anti-Semitic undertones, Caviezel said, "It's been the most frustrating thing to watch. ... Our faith is grounded in our Jewish tradition. We believe we're from the House of David. We believe we're from the House of Abraham, so we cannot hate our own. That crowd standing before Pontius Pilate screaming for the head of Christ in no way convicts an entire race for the death of Jesus Christ any more than the actions of Mussolini condemn all Italians, or the heinous actions of Stalin condemn all Russians. We're all culpable in the death of Christ. My sins put him up there. Yours did. That's what this story is about."
Caviezel's career struggled in the years immediately following The Passion, which grossed over $600 million at the box office and was the second highest-grossing R-rated film ever made at the time after The Matrix Reloaded. In 2018, he told People, "As soon as I did Passion, other [film offers] stopped coming in," but added, "I'm a big boy and I'm not going to play a victim." He became more outspoken about his beliefs, saying, "I had no choice but to defend my faith at that point." He also said he had to be more protective of his family and his time because he became recognizable around the world, and struggled with how to approach future endeavors because he felt he could not top the Passion role. He did have roles in three films released in 2004 which had been filmed prior to the release of The Passion, starring in Bobby Jones: Stroke of Genius and Highwaymen, and taking a supporting role in The Final Cut, which starred Robin Williams. His career rebounded when he was cast as the villain opposite star Denzel Washington in the 2006 thriller Déjà Vu, which was a box office hit. He also had a leading role in Unknown (2006). He provided the voice of Jesus on the 2007 New Testament audio dramatization The Word of Promise. He played Kainan in Outlander (2008). Also in 2008, he starred in Long Weekend. In 2009, Caviezel played French-Iranian journalist Freidoune Sahebjam in The Stoning of Soraya M., a drama set in 1986 Iran about the execution of a young mother. When asked about how his Catholic faith was affected by this story, he said, "You don't have to go any further than the gospels to figure out what the right thing to do is, whether you should be more concerned helping someone regardless of their religion or where they're from". That same year, he reprised the role of Jesus in the latest installment of The Word of Promise. Caviezel starred in The Prisoner, a remake of the British science fiction series with the same name, in November 2009.
From 2011 to 2016, Caviezel starred in the CBS drama series Person of Interest as John Reese, a former CIA agent who now works for a mysterious billionaire as a vigilante. He drew on martial arts training he had done as a child and boxing experience as an adult to do most of his own stunts. The show received the highest ratings in 15 years for a series pilot and consistently garnered over 10 million weekly viewers, with much critical acclaim. Caviezel was nominated for the People's Choice Award for Favorite Dramatic TV Actor in 2014 and again in 2016 for his work on Person of Interest. After Person of Interest concluded in 2016, Caviezel signed on as lead character of CBS's SEAL Team series in 2017. However, Caviezel left the project due to creative differences before production began and was replaced by David Boreanaz. Caviezel starred in the 2014 football film When the Game Stands Tall as De La Salle High School coach Bob Ladouceur, whose Concord, California, Spartans prep team had a 151-game winning streak from 1992 to 2003, an American sporting record. He appeared in the 2013 film Escape Plan, playing a warden who maintains order in the world's most secret and secure prison. Caviezel narrated two documentaries in 2016 regarding Christianity. One was Liberating a Continent: John Paul II and the Fall of Communism and the other was The Face of Mercy. In an interview about the former film, he stated that John Paul II had crushed communism "with love".
