It's not easy playing the Son of God

Jesus has been the subject of movies almost since film was invented.

Several silent films on the life of Jesus were made in France between 1898 and 1908, each consisting of a series of brief scenes with intertitles. The English actor Robert Henderson Bland was the first to play Christ in a full-length motion picture, starring in the pious 71-minute 1912 black-and-white silent film From the Manger to the Cross. Other silent films followed, including Cecil B. DeMille’s The King of Kings (1927). There, Jesus was played by H.B Warner, best known for his later role as Mr. Gower, the pharmacist who boxed George Bailey’s ears in Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life.

Out of reverence, the early “talkies” showed Jesus at a distance with few close-ups. The classic Ben Hur (1959, with the uncredited Claude Heater), which won Best Picture, does not show Jesus’ face but instead uses over-the-shoulder angles or close-ups of his hands.

Since 1960, dozens of actors have played Jesus onscreen, each providing a unique interpretation. The highly acclaimed Jesus of Nazareth, which debuted as a two- part television film in 1977, established Robert Powell as the “face of Jesus” for millions of viewers; the musical Godspell and the rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar (both 1973) appealed to some audiences but were deemed irreverent or blasphemous by others.

But no Jesus film is perfect, said Eric Groth, a Legate of the Rockford Chapter and president of ODB Films.

“I love Jesus films that beautifully portray His humanity,” said Groth. “Filmmakers do an injustice to Jesus storytelling when they do not offer an honest look at both Christ’s humanity and His divinity.”

While all films on Christ have flaws, “most have something valuable to offer,” he said. “Most of the films about Jesus present beautiful imagery that draws me deeper into reflection on who Christ is and who He is calling me to be.”

The importance of playing Jesus

King of Kings (1961) was the first major production on the life of Christ to freely show Jesus’ face. It met with critical reviews, in part because Jeffrey Hunter was seen as too youthful to play Jesus.

“You try to get the feel of any role, but it’s much more difficult in the case of Christ because everyone has their own personal image of Him,” Hunter said of his portrayal. “It’s a role you take on, knowing that no matter how you play it, you are going to disappoint many.”

In 1964, director Pier Paolo Pasolini, an atheist and Marxist, cast Enrique Irazoqui as Jesus in The Gospel According to St. Matthew. Despite never having acted before, Irazoqui acquitted himself well, according to at least one Catholic critic.

“What stands out to me is Irazoqui’s lack of self-consciousness and affectation,” writes Deacon Steven D. Greydanus on his Decent Films blog, which includes reviews of several movies on Christ. “Few Jesus films manage to avoid the pitfall of making Christ seem artificially preoccupied with His own authority and status.”

The following year, Max von Sydow got the Jesus role in The Greatest Story Ever Told. This epic film with its all-star cast, complete with John Wayne in a bit role as a drawling centurion, was not received well either, but like King of Kings found extended life in later television broadcasts.

Von Sydow’s “austere, otherworldly Jesus was felt to be off-putting and unapproachable” by audiences, Greydanus writes. His “impassive performance is best seen as an interpretation of John’s overtly divine and sovereign Lord, in contrast to the generally clearer indications of humanity in the Synoptics. He isn’t warm or approachable, but he’s persuasively authoritative and all-knowing.”

The definitive Jesus?

Franco Zeffirelli’s Jesus of Nazareth wins praise from Greydanus for its “depth and sympathy of its presentation of Jesus’ Jewish milieu” and its dramatic depiction of Christ’s miracles. “While not necessarily the best Jesus movie ever,” he wrote just a few years back, it remains “the standard by which other Jesus films are judged.”

Greydanus had a mixed evaluation of the portrayal of Jesus. After noting Powell’s “Shakespearean bearing and diction, long dramatic pauses,” and “‘Jedi-like histrionics’ during miracle scenes,” he said Powell’s performance as Jesus errs in the direction “of stiffness and ethereality.” Still, Powell is “capable of emotional expressiveness,” such as when preaching the parables, he added.

Groth, who said he “grew up” on Jesus of Nazareth, said the actor evidently made a convincing Jesus even during filming. “Rumor has it that Robert Powell was so believable in his portrayal of Jesus on the set that crew members would stop cussing during breaks whenever he would interact with them,” he said.

Powell recently told The History Channel of the challenges he met while attempting to play Jesus.

“Franco Zeffirelli and I originally thought that we could combine the divine Christ with the human one and that we would be able to show the human side of Him, but we discovered that it was just not possible,” he said. “You go as an actor and work subjectively, but the moment you start to try and play Him as a real person, you lose the divinity completely.”

Jesus in the new millenium

Powell has more recent competition for the “face of Jesus” label from Jim Caviezel (The Passion of the Christ, 2004) and Jonathan Roumie (The Chosen, 2017-present).

Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ, a gritty depiction of Jesus’ torture and death filmed in Aramaic and Latin with subtitles, nevertheless became the highest-grossing Christian film ever both in the United States and worldwide. Caviezel has said playing Jesus was his most difficult role he’s ever taken.

“There is nothing more glorious and at the same time more humbling than this role,” he said in an interview. “Nothing could teach me humility better.”

The role led him to pray more. “I asked God to show me how I could present Jesus in the most accurate way, how to make the viewers feel closer to Him, how to inspire them,” Caviezel said. “It has been my inner journey, which hasn’t finished yet.”

Roumie, who spoke at January’s Legatus Summit East 2022 in Florida, has said he tries to portray Jesus “from a point of infinite compassion and mercy,” which he sees as God’s greatest attribute.

“His infinite ocean of mercy is what makes Him so indescribably and inutterably worthy of adoration and praise, and that’s been spoken of through the Bible in both the Old and New Testaments,” he explained in an interview. “That’s where I have to start. Otherwise, it’s just a very pale representation of who I understand Him to be.”

Roumie believes people have warmed to his portrayal “because Jesus has felt relatable and human for the first time in any iteration that [they] can remember.”

For Groth, Roumie’s performance makes The Chosen his favorite among Jesus films.

“Like Jim Caviezel, Jonathan Roumie is a practicing Roman Catholic who integrates his faith in the exploration and presentation of the Christ role that he plays,” he said. “For these men, the acting in and of itself is a prayer, an intentional opportunity for them to be a conduit for Christ in the character of Christ.”

The Chosen “leads with beauty,” Groth said. “When you lead with beauty, the human heart and mind open to truth and goodness that can only come from the gospel.” 

GERALD KORSON, editorial consultant for Legatus magazine, is based in Indiana.


When being Christ is a life-changing role

Jeffrey Hunter, who had starred with John Wayne a few years earlier in The Searchers, was at the age that Christ died — 33 — when cast as Jesus in King of Kings (1961).

“I was warned not to do it,” he later recalled in an interview. “Actors who play Jesus are supposed to have a hard time getting other roles to follow, but I felt this was a myth. After all, how can you be typecast as Christ?”

Hunter made sure he wasn’t. After King of Kings, he took on far different roles — war films, Westerns, and even as captain of The Enterprise in the original pilot for Star Trek — but never reached the same level of stardom. He died of a brain hemorrhage and skull fracture in 1969 at the age of 42.

Ted Neeley, who played Jesus in the controversial 1973 rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar, hasn’t minded the typecast. He made it part of his career and continues to play the role in touring theater performances. He is scheduled to appear in Superstar in four Italian cities during the month of May 2022.

Jim Caviezel, also 33 when he played Jesus, knew that signing on to the title role in Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ could affect his career afterward. It did, to some degree.

“All of a sudden I stopped being one of the five most popular actors in the studio, and I hadn’t done anything wrong,” he said in an interview. “I just played Jesus.” Likewise Jesus, he pointed out, “was betrayed by His own people and abandoned by everyone.”

Caviezel’s career did recover, and he went on to star in films and television productions. He is set to reprise his role in Gibson’s sequel, tentatively titled The Resurrection.

His role as Jesus emboldened his Catholic faith and gave his life new impetus going forward. “My duty was not only to show it all on the screen,” Caviezel said. “My real duty is to live in accordance with the gospel every day and to give witness to the truth.”

Jonathan Roumie, who told the Legatus Summit audience in January of how Robert Powell’s portrayal in Jesus of Nazareth inspired him as a youth, had experienced a “deeper conversion” shortly before taking on The Chosen that led him to begin living his life through the lens of his Catholic faith.

Broke and unemployed in Los Angeles, he knelt before his crucifix and prayed, “I surrender, I surrender,” he recalled. A call from The Chosen director Dallas Jenkins, with whom Roumie had worked previously on smaller projects, came three months later.

“With The Chosen, because of the amount of time I had to spend with Christ and the stories about Christ and researching Him and His time and all the conversions I’ve had, I believe that has brought out more of what God has put within me,” he explained in an interview. “It also clarified or expounded upon the mission that I think I’ve been given, which is to help lead people to Christ through my art.”

Roumie now fully accepts portraying Christ as his calling.

“I feel like I was made for such a time as this,” he told Christianity Today. “This is what God put me on this planet to do right now.

“Until He calls me to do something else, I’m just going to try to embrace it as best I can.”