Answering the (casting) call

For an actor, Jesus Christ is the role of roles. Larger than life and, indeed, death, the Messiah is a complex character filled with sweetness and light, temptation and anger, suffering and redemption. Since the birth of motion pictures, dozens of actors have walked a mile in his sandals, from Max von Sydow to Donald Sutherland to Chris Sarandon. Now amid unprecedented publicity and controversy, Jim Caviezel has taken on the starring role in Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ,” and the historic burden that goes with it.

“It’s an epic journey, but it’s not anything that you would want an actor to play like an epic,” says Jeremy Zimmermann, the casting director who found a pre-”Six Feet Under” Jeremy Sisto for the 1999 TNT series “Jesus.” “The role requires an actor with dignity, grace and a visionary attitude, but also selflessness and a common touch.”

Often those who succeed, Zimmermann observes, are unknowns who are not identified with a particular role, or actors who are versatile enough “to create a blank canvas.” Although many critics and theologians consider Enrique Irazoqui, an untrained Spanish economics student who played Jesus in Pasolini’s “The Gospel According to St. Matthew,” as the best cinematic Christ, no one can lay claim to a definitive performance.

Perhaps that is because, in Hollywood script-parsing terms, Jesus is a multifaceted, though somewhat underdeveloped, character created by a committee of writers.

“Bringing his life to the screen, every filmmaker is going to have to negotiate four different portraits based on the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John,” says Phillip Cunningham, director of the center for Christian-Jewish Learning at Boston College. “And every actor has to grapple with a character that is both human and divine.”

Changing times have also dictated a change in Christ. For each successive generation of moviegoers, a new version of Jesus seems to arise -- from the reverent, halo-bearing Son of God in silent films to the all-too-human carpenter in late 20th century miniseries. Along the way, Jesus morphed from a Camelot era charismatic (in 1961’s “King of Kings”) to a pre-Vietnam mystic (1965’s “The Greatest Story Ever Told”) to 1973’s premier flower child (“Godspell”) and pop idol (“Jesus Christ Superstar”).

In the late ‘80s, Christ became more iconoclast than icon -- the child of a gas station attendant, in Godard’s “Hail Mary,” and the irritatingly introspective hallucinatory Willem Dafoe played in Martin Scorsese’s “The Last Temptation of Christ.”

Christian Bale’s turn in the 1999 “Mary, Mother of Jesus” presented a Messiah who was a lovable and regular dude, a Gen X Jesus. The Christ in Gibson’s film suffers such gory torture that it has been rated R and may be seen as a symbol of an era of divisive political and religious factions. In any case, it is a far cry from the traditional portrait.

“Early filmmakers gravitated to a bland Sunday school version of Christ,” Roy Kinnard and Tim Davis write in their 1992 book, “Divine Images.” A “blue-eyed, white-robed Boy Scout from Judea became the accepted film version of Jesus for more than 60 years.”

The history of cinematic Christ dates to the infancy of film. Frank Russell portrayed the Messiah in the 1898 Edison production of “The Passion Play of Oberammergau,” shot on the roof of New York’s Grand Central Palace. In 1913, the delicately featured Robert Henderson-Bland traveled to Egypt to play Jesus in “From the Manger to the Cross.” The experience so obsessed Bland that he wrote two books about it and rarely worked as an actor again, giving rise to the notion that when it comes to a Hollywood career, cursed is he who plays him.

THAT has certainly proved true for some. Heartthrob Jeffrey Hunter, who starred in “King of Kings,” John Drew Barrymore in “Pontius Pilate” (1967) and Ted Neely, in the rock operatic “Jesus Christ Superstar” all faded fast. After “The Passover Plot” in 1976, Zalman King became a writer whose credits include “9 1/2 Weeks” and “Red Shoe Diaries.”

Just as many actors, however, ascended to greater heights after playing the Son of God. H.B. Warner, the star of DeMille’s 1927 “King of Kings,” enjoyed a long career as a character actor, playing against dignified type as the town drunk in “It’s a Wonderful Life.” Von Sydow portrayed Jesus in “The Greatest Story Ever Told,” but became far more famous battling the anti-Christ in “The Exorcist.” Victor Garber, star of “Godspell,” has enjoyed a career on Broadway and in the TV show “Alias.” Dafoe has made more than 40 films since “The Last Temptation.”

For Caviezel, it is difficult to predict if the role of a lifetime will be a blessing or a curse. An unassuming veteran of some 20 films, he has barely registered with American moviegoers. Now he will be carrying the year’s most anticipated film. He has one credential, though, that none of his predecessors had: During the filming of “The Passion,” Caviezel was struck by lightning.