“You’ll never work in this town again” was the blunt line Mel Gibson threw at Jim Caviezel (Mount Vermont, age 54) after he agreed to star in The Passion of the Christ (2004). The actor revealed it during a talk at the First Baptist Church of Orlando. His response was equally clear: “We all must carry our crosses.” Gibson’s prophetic abilities are in question: Two decades later, Caviezel is the star of the summer’s most controversial film, and while his career has suffered for various reasons, he’s never quite faded from the limelight.
In the summer of the departure of Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones and the acclaimed Barbie and Oppenheimer, an unexpected guest shows up at the box office. Sound of Freedom, which hit theaters July 4, has already surpassed $100 million at the US box office, a disproportionate figure for a film that cost less than $15 million, sat in a Disney drawer for years, and was rejected by Netflix and Amazon. Unexpected characters for a true story with hints of a made-for-TV movie and Jim Caviezel as the only recognizable star as a former US Homeland Security agent who left his job to found an NGO dedicated to taking down pedophile rings.
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The film ended up with a Christian film production company, which crowdfunded it. Everything seems normal, except that during the film’s promotion, the far-right organization QAnon came to light, with which the producers deny any connection. The group is associated with the capture of the Capitol, with such surreal events as that which brought together thousands of people in Texas awaiting the resurrection of John John Kennedy to Trump’s Vice President or Pizzagate. According to Qanon, a cabal of Democratic politicians led by Hillary Clinton and Hollywood stars like Tom Hanks kidnap children to torture them in satanic rituals and extract from their blood adrenochrome, a substance derived from adrenaline that would allow them to stay young forever. Although Mexican-born Alejandro Monteverde’s film refrains from mentioning Jim Caviezel had talked repeated by him, before and during the film’s promotion. “It’s a chemical compound, a drug that elites have been using for many years. It’s ten times stronger than heroin.”
The film’s popularity has contributed to the publicity campaign launched by the far right, led by Donald Trump, who held a Sound of Freedom screening at his golf club in Bedminster last Wednesday.
He also had the support of Mel Gibson and far-right guru Steve Bannon, into whose microphones Caviezel spoke a few days ago, and where he reiterated adrenochrome: “It has some mystical properties that make you look younger,” he said.
Caviezel has repeatedly thanked Trump for his support, whom he considers “God’s chosen one.” “I want to tell you that when you see this you will feel peace because more than anyone else you have done the incredible things that Jesus preached,” he explained on Bannon’s podcast. “I believe Donald Trump was chosen by God Almighty and I speak of God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit,” he added.
Caviezel’s connection to the ultra-conservative agenda comes as no surprise. Twenty years ago, he almost literally carried the burden of The Passion of the Christ, the controversial film about the last hours of Jesus Christ, directed by Mel Gibson. The director, who is usually in the limelight for his anti-Semitic and racist remarks and instances of sexist violence, didn’t want Anglo-Saxon actors in favor of truthfulness and Caviezel, with his oceanic blue eyes, was far from the face of a true Hebrew. But no one would dig deeper into a grueling production than a fervent religious man who considers John Paul II to be his greatest influence. During filming, he suffered several accidental lashes, dislocated his shoulder from the weight of the cross, suffered from pneumonia and constant migraines, and was struck by lightning. Perhaps God didn’t like her son’s biopic any more than the critics who slammed her for her gore excesses and outright anti-Semitism. “While words say love, love, love, sounds and images say hate, hate, hate,” wrote Andrew Sarris in the New York Observer. What nobody criticized was the performance of Caviezel, a brilliant actor with an imposing physique that could have established him as a classic heartthrob, but he chose a different path.
Caviezel made his film debut, directed by Gus van Sant, in My Private Idaho, the poetic tale of a narcoleptic hustler in love with his best friend, a queer film gem starring Keanu Reeves and River Phoenix in which he played an airport employee. A very short role, which he owed to a lie: he pretended to be Italian. The son of a chiropractor and a Washington state homemaker, he was raised in an ultra-religious family and his acting career was exceptional, destined, like his four brothers, to be basketball players.
Jim Caviezel, in Sound of Freedom.
He began to stand out as the brother of Wyatt Earp in the 1994 film Lawrence Kasdan and went on to have several minor roles in The Rock and Lieutenant O’Neil. Returning to film after two decades, Terence Malick put it at the center of The Thin Red Line (1998), a spiritual and aesthetic foray into war that earned seven Oscar nominations. Half of Hollywood had aspired to his role, from Brad Pitt to Johnny Depp to Matthew McConaughey. “Caviezel’s role is heavenly, irreplaceable and a huge part of what makes the film so special,” reports The Guardian.
His face looked familiar. He was the son of Dennis Quaid in Frequency (2000), one of my favorite Saturday lunchtime movies, Ashley Judd’s husband with a shady past in The Whole Truth (2002), a mystery lover of Jennifer López in Mirada de Ángel (2001), and Edmundo Dantes in the adaptation of The Count of Monte Cristo (2002). A success so solid that it allowed him to turn down the role of Cyclops in “X-Men”. His career took off when The Passion of the Christ was released. Just in his 30s, JC plays JC “There are no coincidences,” he explained when Polish media highlighted this fact. “For God there are no coincidences. But even if I raise the dead, they’ll say it was an accident.
After the Passion of the Christ, it seemed Gibson’s prophecy would come true. He blames Hollywood’s atheism. “It saddens me that so many people in my country do not strive for holiness. They replace it with drugs and hedonism,” he explained. He found refuge on television as John Reese in Person of Interest, a critically acclaimed Procedural produced by JJ Abrams and Jonathan Nolan that ran for five seasons. “I suddenly dropped out of the top five most popular actors in the studio, and it wasn’t because I did anything wrong. I just played Jesus. Did this rejection affect me personally? Well, everyone has to carry their cross. But after all, I won’t stay in this world forever. Neither do Hollywood producers. At some point everyone has to be held accountable for their actions.
Jim Caviezel in the role that made him world famous: The Passion of the Christ (2004).
In addition to his ideas, which are a time bomb for publicists, Hollywood’s reluctance to hire him may also contribute to his refusal to play certain roles. He does not want to act in films where violence is used for entertainment, he also refuses to undress and tries to avoid overly passionate romances. “I have a hard time stripping naked in a movie,” she explained. “I don’t think it’s right. In my faith, I was taught that abstinence is important… You’ll never see my butt in the film unless it’s set during the Holocaust.” He doesn’t think this policy, which is followed by other actors like two-time Academy Award winner Denzel Washington, is an obstacle. “If they’re really interested in my work, they’ll change the script. If not, it’s because they’re not looking for me.”
When he had to shoot a love scene with Jennifer López in the aforementioned Mirada de ángel, he made it clear from the start that he would never accept nudes. I told them, “Put her on a top, I’ll keep my shorts on, and she’ll keep hers.” His motivation is “dedication, love and respect” to his wife. Since 1996 he has been married to Kerry Browitt, an English teacher whom he met on a blind date and with whom he has three adopted children in China, two of whom have health problems.
His relationship to his faith has also created tensions with other Hollywood stars. Not only was he a staunch and outspoken anti-abortion advocate, he also appeared in a 2006 documentary film opposing the use of stem cells in research, made in response to the demands of Michael J. Fox, who had Parkinson’s disease, whom he dubbed Judas. While he’s excited about his recent unexpected success, he remains hopeful that a long-awaited project will come to fruition, a sequel to The Passion of the Christ, again directed by his friend Mel Gibson, which could mean his own resurrection in Hollywood.
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