Jim Caviezel is suggesting that Hollywood is to blame for his bad career since Passion of the Christ, saying that it was this role that resulted in him being shunned from Hollywood and pushed to the side for film roles.

It seems that Mel Gibson even tried to dissuade him from taking the role, concerned that it would damage his Hollywood career and suggested that he back away from it.

It's true, well according to the recanted story it is. Jim Caviezel says that Mel Gibson had offered him the role and called him back twenty minutes later to try and get him to pull out, he says that Gibson had said:

"You'll never work in this town again"

That wasn't a threat, rather it seemed that Gibson was concerned for the actor and was offering him a way out. To that Caviezel apparently said:

"We all have to embrace our crosses"

Ah, clever pun. He went on to tell the Baptist Church audience he was speaking to that:

"We have to give up our names, our reputations, our lives to speak the truth"

Well that would depend on whose truth you are referring to I would guess and what truth the people giving you that reputation believe, however that's a whole different argument.

It's rather interesting that the article in The Guardian that highlights Caviezel's comments suggests the following as evidence of his rising career before Passion of the Christ:

He headlined the 2002 remake of The Count of Monte Cristo and starred opposite Jennifer Lopez in the 2001 romantic drama Angel Eyes.

Seriously, those films indicate he had a huge career ahead of him? Does anyone even remember those films? They're just part of the conveyor belt of Hollywood and haven't had any lasting affect. To be fair he was in some good films before that, but they were smaller roles - Wyatt Earp, The Rock, G.I. Jane, The Thin Red, Frequency and Pay it Forward.

So was his career really flying towards the stars? No, not at all. It was Passion of the Christ that really brought him to the fore as a big name actor, so what happened after that? Well Bobby Jones: Stroke of Genius and Unknown did.

To be fair what also followed were Déjà Vu (Filmstalker review) but so did Outlander (Filmstalker review) and the joke of a film Nature's Grave (Long Weekend) (Filmstalker review), but again to add balance, he did appear in The Stoning of Soraya M. and his Prisoner role on television wasn't terrible.

Yes, there were some complete stinkers in there though and for me it was these choices that helped to flatten his career, and I'm not really a great fan of his acting which doesn't seem to offer a lot of variance in character.

Apart from The Prisoner television remake he was quiet from 2008, after the Nature's Grave (Long Weekend), until 2011 and he has two films from that year in post production with another two due next year also in the same phase.

He could be planning a resurgence of his career, although the upcoming films Transit, Person of Interest, Savannah and Sound of Mind aren't exactly about to set the world on fire.

Was it Hollywood that destroyed his career or his terrible choice of films? I think the latter, coupled with the fact that whenever I see him act I see Jim Caviezel, oh and I have not seen Passion of the Christ either so I am unaffected in my judgement by that film.

Surely there have been much more independent film choices out there, films which haven't had the terrible plot holes and problems as Outlander or the terrible dead sea cow of Nature's Grave (Long Weekend)? Perhaps it needed him to turn away from Hollywood?