It must be a tense moment, being a movie star, when a bound-up script lands on the welcome-mat of your Beverly Hills pad. You wonder: “could this plain looking collection of papers cluttering up my fanmail pile be the gateway to an Oscar, or the instrument of my downfall?”
The simple fact is that some roles are riskier than others. The last many will have seen of Jim Caviezel will have been his mutilated and bloodied back after being flayed and crucified, playing Jesus in The Passion of the Christ. However, Caviezel goes further, claiming his flagellation extends to Hollywood, where he has been unable to get work and forced into low-budget, obscure movies that damage his credibility and our faith in the film industry by having to endure them.
It would certainly seem, on the face of it, that The Passion of the Christ was a fatal blow to Caviezel’s career. However, considering its success at the box office and the strength of the lead’s performance, can his downfall be attributed to a movie that on the surface did reasonably well? If Caviezel is suggesting it is the act of playing Jesus, and not the integrity of the film that ruined him, we have to consider other Hollywood greats who have undertaken the role of the messiah. Take Willem Dafoe in the Last Temptation of Christ: he went on after that to have twenty-four years of movie success. John Turturro likewise emerged from the role relatively unscathed.
Even roles that are arguably more controversial have blossomed into fruitful careers for their risk-taking actors. Bruno Ganz, playing Hitler in Der Untergang (or the ironically translated ‘Downfall’) still enjoys box-office success to this day, having appeared in Acadamy Award-nominated films such as The Reader. Indeed, Charlie Chaplin, who used his striking resemblance to the German leader to step into his shoes in his spoof film The Great Dictator could hardly be described as a Hollywood exile.
Clearly, Caviezel has suffered from a severe dose of bad luck. Having been chewed up and spat out by Hollywood, one can only attribute this to divine intervention, or maybe just poor career planning. It would seem that in Hollywood, it is not the role that makes the man, but the man that makes the role.