Continued from page 1

Jim Caviezel

By Amy Longsdorf

Friday February 20, 2004 10:15 AM EST

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This movie has struck a nerve, to say the least, with its controversial subjects: politics and religion.
What I was hoping, and what I think comes through with the film, is that it's above religion. When you go to the Vatican and you look at the Pieta, at the blessed mother and the son, you don't have to be religious to appreciate this art. You can look at it and say, "My God, it's done by a 24-year-old kid, Michelangelo. What a genius." The same thing goes with this movie. It's still a mother-and-son relationship that transcends whether you're religious or not.

You've costarred with Jennifer Lopez (Angel Eyes), Dennis Quaid (Frequency) and Ashley Judd (High Crimes). How did you know this was the right project for you?
Well, Mel Gibson is not that bad of a director. Did you ever see Braveheart'? ... But I didn't care who (the director) was, I wanted to know what he wanted to do. If he was going to have Jesus walk down and get pizza at Domino's, I wasn't interested in that.

You make a great physical transformation in this movie. What was that like?
I started in the makeup chair at 2 in the morning and that went until 10. I was carrying a cross, and someone knocked my shoulder out. Then, the cross is on a 1,000-foot cliff and the wind would go up at about 30 knots and go right through you. At one point, I couldn't feel my legs and my arms.

And you suffered from hypothermia, right?
Yeah, hypothermia, every day. We would go back and do a two-hour shower, and I'd drink a gallon of water, and then I would start to sweat ... and you go home and you get maybe three and a half, four hours of sleep and start all over again.

What else?
Then, the scourging scenes – I experienced the whip.

Your suffering seems real.
Yeah, but I realize that I was just an actor playing this guy.

Is it fair to call this a profoundly spiritual experience?
There's no question. There's no passive onlookers, there's no passive actors. This is just something that you take with you for the rest of your life. It's a responsibility. I don't always choose the best, (but) I think that what you see up there, at the end of day is two things: grace and truth.