Mel Gibson warned Jim Caviezel after they first mentioned “The Passion of the Christ” that if he took the function of Jesus it may damage his profession, the 56-year-old actor stated this week.
Caviezel stated he initially met with Gibson’s producer about doing a surfer film, however “the script wasn’t there yet.”
About 40 minutes into the assembly with Steve McEveety, Gibson confirmed up.
“We were talking about surfing movies and everything, and then it pivots into Christ movies, you know, Jesus movies. Well, that’s not a surfing movie. It’s not Jesus on a surfboard. How’s that going to work?” Caviezel informed Fox Information contributor Raymond Arroyo on his “Arroyo Grande” podcast on Wednesday.
Caviezel stated he remembered again to when he was 19 years outdated, and he believed the voice of God spoke to him and informed him to be an actor.
“I went, ‘Oh my God,’ I mean, I’m not blaspheming God, I’m not taking his name in vain,” he stated concerning the assembly with Gibson. “I literally said, ‘Oh my God, this is it,’ and I said, ‘You want me to play Jesus, don’t you?”
He stated Gibson nearly swallowed the cigarette he was smoking, and he choked out, “Yeah.”
“And I said, ‘OK, I’m in,’ and because of the movie theater [incident], I said, ‘I’m supposed to do this. I don’t need anybody to tell me to do this.’”
Gibson referred to as him two days later to warn him.
“He goes, ‘You really want to do this?’ He goes, ‘If you do this movie, you may never work in this town again,’ and I went, ‘What?’”
Caviezel stated, “What I wanted to make was what really happened, so I was OK with that.”
Whereas making the movie, Caviezel stated he went to confession day-after-day to “keep my temple as pure as I can so that he could come through me.”
He additionally went by way of extreme bodily anguish whereas engaged on the film, which included contracting double pneumonia, hypothermia, separating his shoulder and being struck by lightning whereas on the cross.
“The pain was excruciating,” he stated of his time on the cross, including that within the final shot within the film, “I got ripped right in half from that lightning bolt.”
He stated he additionally had atrial fibrillation whereas he was on the cross and {that a} set physician turned to Gibson after listening to his coronary heart by way of a stethoscope and stated, “He could die.”
After the shoot, Caviezel underwent two coronary heart surgical procedures that he stated stemmed from all that he went by way of within the film.
The cross was rigged with a motorcycle seat that he may sit on through the shoot, and Caviezel stated he was so exhausted that he would sleep whereas up there.
“I couldn’t stay awake,” he stated of the exhausting shoot.
He even slept in his make-up that took round eight hours to placed on.
“It was constant torment,” he stated, including that he felt that introduced him nearer to the struggling of Jesus.
By the point they obtained to the crucifixion scenes, he stated he wasn’t positive he may pull it off due to his shoulder separation.
“It forced me into the arms of my God because I had nowhere else to go,” he informed Arroyo.
However he stated as soon as he realized how a lot God “loves me, I wanted to do it for him.”
“It was OK though, because it was part of the purpose of why I was born,” he added.
He added, “The films that we make are controlling the world’s narrative, and the world didn’t like this film, and that’s a good thing, so we did a good job.”
Caviezel is making ready to play Jesus as soon as once more in “The Resurrection of the Christ,” and whereas he’s “scared” to tackle the function once more, he stated he is aware of he wouldn’t be prepared if there wasn’t some worry.
Gibson invested tens of tens of millions of his personal cash into 2004’s “The Passion of the Christ,” and the movie was an enormous success, grossing greater than $600 million worldwide.
It’s the highest-grossing non secular movie on the international field workplace, in accordance with the Guinness Ebook of World Data.
“The Resurrection of the Christ” is anticipated to be launched in 2026.
