Caviezel: new name in hollywood

JAMES Patrick Caviezel might have been a doctor, or a pilot, even a pro basketball player. Instead, he became an actor and today he's one of the hot Hollywood items with a "role so small if you blink you'd miss it" in My Own Private Idaho, with Keanu Reeves and the ill-fated River Phoenix and a breakthrough role in The Thin Red Line, and follow-ups in Frequency and Play It Forward.

His latest starring role is as young French sailor Edmond Dantes in the latest screen version of the Alexandre Dumas swashbuckling The Count of Monte Christo, the interior scenes for which were shot in Ireland.

In the much-filmed - there have been at least 18 others, count them - story of betrayal and revenge set at the end of the Napoeonic Wars, Caviezel's character finds himself embroiled in intrigue of ambition and thrown into jail. Upon his escape he sets out to track down those who caused his downfall.

It is, says the 31-year-old actor who was born in Mount Vernon in Washington State and who started acting in local theatre groups around Seattle, a highly spiritual story with much still to tell the present day: "I was impressed by this intense spirituality, it was one of the things that attracted me to it. I early on realised that Dantes goes through a process, emerging from a fear to be a confident man.

"I found out - and a lot of people today would do well to think about this - that freedom doesn't come from being able to walk around. It comes directly from within yourself. When Dantes escapes, he still doesn't have it, because he's obsessed with that need for revenge. It's only later that he gets his freedom ... of the soul."

As a devout Catholic who attends Mass daily and takes Confession as often as he can, Caviezel recalls how strange it was for his character to have to say the line: 'I don't believe in God.' A fellow-prisoner says: 'It doesn't matter, for he believes in you.'

He co-stars in The Count alongside Guy Pearce and veteran Irish actor, Richard Harris: "He's a wonderful man, is Mr Harris. Wonderful. A legend. He spent a lot of time with me, talking to me about the theatre and the people that he's worked with. The scenes we had were all pretty intense, because we both had long matted hair - it took me three hours in make-up each day getting it done - and wore filthy rags and had to call on a range of emotions.

"One day I was getting pretty stressed out, and Richard said what I needed in our lunch hour was a good pint of Guinness. I said I'd far rather he sang me MacArthur Park ... and, sure enough, in our break he took me aside and crooned it to me. That was worth more than any pint, believe me!"

For his role, for which he learned how to fence, Caviezel watched several swordplay movies, including Ridley Scott's The Duellists, the old TV Zorro adventures and the earlier Rob Roy: "And, of course, Errol Flynn movies. Errol in his tights and flattering codpiece is a sight to behond, but they were an inspiration."

He also read a lot of books about being in prison since he, and his fellow actors, wanted the movie to be "crunched in reality ... given a serious tone."

He didn't, surprisingly, watch any of the previous movies: "The Count of Monte Christo seems to be re-made every decade. But then the book is one of the great literary classics."

Later in the year, he will be seen in High Crimes alongside Morgan Freeman and Ashley Judd: "I fight for the things I want. You work if you're a 'name' in Hollywood. But I know now how you get to be a 'name' ... and the secret is hard work!"