James Caviezel

Caviezel was born in Mount Vernon, Washington, the son of Margaret, a housewife, and James Patrick Caviezel, Sr., a chiropractor. He has a younger brother, Timothy, and sisters Ann, Amy, and Erin, and was raised in a tight-knit Roman Catholic family in Conway, Washington. He attended Mount Vernon High School for two years and then moved to Seattle and lived with family friends in order to play basketball at the Catholic O'Dea High School. The following spring, he transferred from O'Dea to another Catholic school John F. Kennedy Memorial High in Burien. There he starred on the basketball team and graduated in 1987. Following high school, Caviezel enrolled at Bellevue Community College where the 6 ft 3 in athlete also played college basketball. A foot injury in his second year, however, put an end to his hopes of a basketball career in the NBA. He later transferred to the University of Washington where he turned his focus to acting and became a member of the Sigma Chi Fraternity.

Caviezel starred in such mainstream Hollywood films as Angel Eyes, Pay It Forward and The Count of Monte Cristo (2002).

In 2004, Caviezel portrayed Jesus Christ in the Mel Gibson film The Passion of the Christ. During filming he was struck by lightning, accidentally whipped, dislocated his shoulder and bruised his eye.

Caviezel is co starring in the film Blown, a London espionage thriller with Samuel L. Jackson.

Caviezel is a devout Roman Catholic and has been a featured public speaker at religious venues since the release of The Passion. On March 19, 2005 he was the main speaker at the first Catholic Men's Conference in Boston. Caviezel stated that he chose to speak at the conference only because he liked Boston Archbishop, Seán Patrick O'Malley. His wife Kerri Browitt Caviezel, also a devout Roman Catholic, is a teacher and an accomplished flautist. The two are active in their Conejo Valley, California parish. Kerri supports a charity for single mothers and also volunteers with their church's Detention Ministry at a camp for incarcerated youth in Malibu, California.

In 2006, Caviezel enrolled in at least one class at University of Notre Dame. He was not enrolled as a full-time degree seeking student.

In 2007, he and his wife adopted Bo, a baby Chinese boy with a brain tumor; the Caviezels have also adopted a second child with a brain tumor, a young girl, from the Guangzhou region of China.

On July 17, 2009 Caviezel was involved in a motorcycle accident about 14 miles southeast of Leavenworth, Washington in which someone threw a bicycle in his path. Suffering cuts and bruises, Caviezel was taken to Cascade Medical Center in Leavenworth; Caviezel was wearing a helmet at the time of the accident.