Jim Caviezel

Born on September 26, 1968 in Mount Vernon, a small town in the state of Washington, James Patrick Caviezel was one of the five children of Jim and Maggie, a couple of sincere Catholic religious convictions that they wanted to transmit to their offspring. During his school days, he aspired to become a basketball star, but a foot injury put an end to his ambitions. Luckily, he discovered his acting vocation, after preparing a theatrical production of a musical with his classmates. In the mid-80s, when he was still a teenager, he moved to Los Angeles, looking for an opportunity in the world of cinema. While he went to dozens of auditions every month, he worked as a waiter to survive. As soon as he arrived, luck smiled at him in the form of a small role in the seriesMurder , She Wrote, in 1984. But then they didn’t hire him as an actor again until four years later, when he starred in The Wonder Years , another hit series.

Everything began to change when Gus Van Sant offered him a part of an extra with a couple of sentences in My Private Idaho , where he played a clerk for an airline company. After being accepted to Julliard, a renowned acting school, increasingly important doors opened for him in hit movies. In Wyatt Earp he was the younger brother of Kevin Costner , in The Rock , a fighter pilot, and in Lt. O’Neil , one of recruit Demi Moore ‘s co-stars . Another soldier became the character that would give him projection, Private Witt, a former boxer who in The Thin Red Linehe deserted and then rejoined his company. Terrence Malick ‘s philosophical film gained immense prestige, for which Caviezel began to be considered for important roles. The Taiwanese Ang Lee hires him for Ride with the Devil , a correct film about the American civil war. In Frequency , a mixture of thriller and fantastic cinema, his character was a firefighter who, due to a strange meteorological phenomenon that sent radio waves back in time, managed to communicate with his deceased father.

Some friends were to blame for the actor accepting a blind date with Kerri, an English language teacher at a high school, who would turn out to be the love of his life. The couple got married in 1997. Out of respect for her, and for moral coherence, the actor demanded that a love sequence with Jennifer López be softened , in Mirada de ángel , by Luis Mandoki . “Before making the film, I made it clear that I was not going to get naked. I feel like we were giving people the wrong message, that if there’s love, then anything goes in sex, and I don’t think that’s the case.” More interesting were his works as a vagabond, welcomed by the protagonists of the Caprian fable Cadena de favors , and his interpretation of Edmund Dantés, the obstinate protagonist ofThe Count of Monte Cristo’s Revenge .

And finally the day came when he had to face the most decisive role of his career. Steve McEveety, producer and regular collaborator of Mel Gibson , called him “to talk about a surfer movie.” Caviezel stayed with him, but Gibson also showed up, who ended up confessing that he wanted to shoot a film about the passion and death of Jesus Christ. It was that day when Caviezel realized the coincidence that his initials were JC, and that he was 33 years old. And while he has managed to ensure that even the film’s detractors have not criticized his interpretation, he had to work hard to carry it out.