The Thin Red Line - Interview with Jim Caviezel

 

The Seattle Times Interview with Jim Caviezel

This interview originally appeared in The Seattle Times on January 8, 1999. Interview by Luaine Lee of Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service. Copyright of The Seattle Times.

Caviezel followed a dream

In spite of the high-profile cameos of George Clooney, John Cusack and John Travolta in "The Thin Red Line," the real star of the film is somebody most people have never heard of.

Jim Caviezel, who plays the Kentucky idealist who weaves a stream-of-consciousness narration throughout the bloody battle on Guadalcanal, earned the role mostly because of who he is. Not from Kentucky (but from a small town in Washington, Mount Vernon), Caviezel is a slow-talking, earnest guy who mostly dreamed of basketball when he was a kid. Along the way somebody noticed he was a deft mimic and encouraged him to try acting.

From a family of five kids (all of whom play basketball), Caviezel, 30, came to Los Angeles with the idea of studying acting.

"I was accepted at Juilliard and they gave me sort of a scholarship. Then they REALLY gave me a scholarship when I said, `Look I can't afford your school unless you give me more money.' And they did. Right after that, maybe a month, I got `Wyatt Earp.' I wanted to do both."

But he couldn't do both. So Juilliard lost out. Caviezel doesn't regret the loss. He says earning a role in "Wyatt Earp" built his confidence and encouraged him to keep trying. But there were many times when he considered giving up the dream. "I'm married and want to have kids," he says, in his slow drawl.

Caviezel has been married to Kerri, a high-school English literature teacher, for 2 1/2 years. He auditioned several times for Terrence Malick, the director of "The Thin Red Line."

"He was a real great guy, a sweet man and we went on to have several lunches and dinners and phone calls," recalls Caviezel, who refuses to change his name to something more euphonic.

"He called me at home up in Washington state. We never talked about the film, really. He asked me about baling hay growing up. Did I know the difference between a round bale and a square bale and what is the difference between alfalfa and regular grass weight. So we built up the trust."

Already there is a flurry of talk about Caviezel. But is he ready for the blast furnace of fame?

Caviezel says he learned a hard lesson about ego when he was still in junior high.

"I was a pretty good ball player. As the stakes got higher there were bigger kids than me, and I came in with a bit of an attitude, a bit cocky. And I got thumped. It hurt but I said to myself, `I'm never going to do that again. I'm never going to be like that again.' I was blessed to learn that early in life," he nods.

"Perspective is important. There are people out there doing far better things than I'm doing and that was the hardest thing about getting into acting because it's like: This is a lifestyle? This kind of life? Whatever I do I've got to treat others as I'd want to be treated.

"I know if you keep connected to who you are inside, happiness is what you're pursuing. You're never going to find it cheating on your wife or in the money. . .

"My dad had a heart attack and open-heart surgery this last year. I'm so close to him, and that sums it up right there. When I got off `The Thin Red Line' and we started shooting `Ride With the Devil,' I couldn't think about any film. I could only think about him. He's OK. He made it through and our family's a lot closer because of it. He said to me, `If I go, it's not because I want to. I want to see your movie and your children.' "

The Thin Red Line - Interview with Jim Caviezel

 

The New York Daily News Interview with Jim Caviezel

This interview originally appeared in the New York Daily News on December 29, 1998. Interview by Ron Givens. Copyright of The New York Daily News.

'Thin Red Line's' Unknown Soldier: A fresh face gets big break in all-star cast of WWII film

Funny things can happen to a movie in the editing room. Take "The Thin Red Line," for example. The WWII movie, which opened last week, had been widely anticipated because its legendarily reclusive director, Terrence Malick, was making his first movie in 25 years. Also because its all-star cast which includes Sean Penn, Nick Nolte, Woody Harrelson, John Travolta and George Clooney, was supposed to surround an up-and-comer named Adrien Brody.

Well, "The Thin Red Line" showcases an almost totally unknown actor all right. Only his name is Jim Caviezel.

His character, Witt, is the spiritual heart of this very intense depiction of the Battle of Guadalcanal.

"It's really been tremendous being a part of this," says the 30-year-old Caviezel, who has only had small roles in movies like "Wyatt Earp" and "Diggstown." "It's like winning the lottery."

The victory was all the sweeter because Caviezel landed the part after nearly seven years of frustration.

"I was almost out the door," says the soft-spoken actor, who was on the verge of moving with his schoolteacher wife back to his native Washington State and studying chiropractic medicine.

The straw that nearly broke this Caviezel's back was a movie called "The Hi-Lo Country," which comes into theaters tomorrow. Caviezel was up for the part won by Billy Crudup and Sean Penn was under consideration for the role that went to Woody Harrelson.

"I had been close before," says Caviezel, "but I thought maybe I had a shot with this. One day I came home and there was a letter on the door from ['Hi-Lo' director] Stephen Frears. It took the wind out of me."

Getting the part of Witt in "Red Line" did not come easily. Caviezel met with Malick several times over the course of the three months it took to land the assignment. They had lunch. There were long talks on the phone. Caviezel took a pass on three separate TV pilots. (They didn't go anywhere anyway.)

Finally, the actor got a call from the director, which he re-creates using what he calls Malick's "Texas-meets-Kermit the Frog" voice.

"Jim, hello, how's everything?"

"Good."

"Well, I was wondering, uh, if you would, uh . . . "

"Yes, Terry."

"If you would like to . . . is Kerry [Caviezel's wife] there? . . . "

"No, she's not here."

"I was wondering if you would like to play Witt."

Once Caviezel went off to Australia for the making of the movie, he had to cope with working in the midst of A-list stars. What got Caviezel through was sheer talent and a rugged work ethic.

"I was a basketball player and that was all I did," says Caviezel. "My goal was to play in the NBA. As I look back, I realize I wasn't good enough to play at the highest level, but I felt that I got everything out of my physical ability."

In "The Thin Red Line," Caviezel creates tremendous impact by not doing much. With bodies being cut down all around him, his character remains remarkably still.

"Jim reflects a kind of innocence and purity that made him very attractive for this role," says George Stevens Jr., executive producer for the movie.

Stevens is very careful when describing the way that the Brody character became almost nonexistent in the movie.

"Jim's character was always intended to be one of the two or three most important parts," he says. "So it's less a matter of Witt becoming more important than there not being room for the development of other characters."

Almost like the understudy who must replace the star on opening night, Caviezel already has seen the benefits of his good fortune. There is a big part in the next Ang Lee movie, "Ride With the Devil," and three more roles are under negotiation. But, the actor emphasizes at the end of the interview, "Don't worry about me getting a big head."

The aw-shucks attitude is not an act. Like the character he plays in "The Thin Red Line," Caviezel doesn't seem to have an insincere bone in his body.

"Everything from this point on," he says, "is just cake."

The Thin Red Line Interview - Adrien Brody

 

The Independent Interview with Adrien Brody

This interview originally appeared in The Independent on April 21, 2001. Interview by James Mottram. Copyright of The Independent.

COMING SOON: THE PRIME OF MR ADRIEN BRODY;
AFTER HIS ROUGH EXPERIENCE ON 'THE THIN RED LINE', THE YOUNG ACTOR HAS BEEN BIDING HIS TIME

Adrien Brody doesn't really look like a movie star. He's tall and awkward-looking, gangly even, with a wedge of black hair, that seems shocked to attention. But his appearance belies the fact that, at just 27, the Manhattan-born Brody is one of the most mature actors of his generation.

Notching up an already impressive list of directors worked with - including Barry Levinson, Terrence Malick, Spike Lee and Steven Soderbergh - his performances are astute, meticulous and spirited. Brody has had his disappointments - he was touted incorrectly, much to his disappointment, as the hot newcomer to emerge from Malick's The Thin Red Line in 1998 - but he still remains willing to take risks with his roles. Take his latest picture, Ken Loach's Bread and Roses: it. features Brody as an LA union organiser fighting in the recent Justice for Janitors campaign. Offering a typically committed performance, Brody says he was attracted initially by the lack of safety net. "I took the job because it was so different: no script, no make-up, no trailer. It was a bit of an adventure, and I didn't know what I would be required to do," he says. "I didn't dislike it, but I didn't prefer it, because I'm an actor and ... I like to guide my performance; I don't like it to just happen, and then me to go home at night and go 'Shit, I wish I'd done that!'" Brody, as he often does, took to the shoot a wealth of research and preparation. He had Spanish lessons, and went undercover in a union to learn the techniques of an organiser, even participating in a picket outside a hotel. "It was good to get a taste of a whole new side of LA, and spend some time downtown. I even considered moving there. It's cheap! In New York, the neighbourhoods aren't so removed. Poor people, wealthy people, every kind of race and cultural background, it's all intermingled. If you have to live in LA, you want to be by the beach - and you have to be wealthy to do that." Brody, who adds that LA's exploited service-industry employees "live in the shadows of the town", claims most Angelinos - himself included - felt inconvenienced by the Justice for Janitors campaign.

"It was an inconvenience to me ... I was pissed off. I had a major audition for (Elizabeth director) Shekhar Kapur, which was very difficult for me to get. Most casting directors say I'm too urban, too ethnic, and this was to play a very English soldier. It was an incredible role. I studied very hard for it. Didn't get it. These janitors were outside making a racket, picketing Paramount. It sounded like a game show was going on." Brody is now "bi-coastal", with homes in both LA and his native New York. It was his mother who sent him to a Saturday class at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts which led to his first off-Broadway acting gig; his father, a teacher, went so far as to take a sabbatical to live in LA while Brody played Mary Tyler Moore's stepson in a CBS series shot there.

After he won his supporting role in Soderbergh's King of the Hill in 1993, Brody's career accelerated, though much of his work went un-noticed. It wasn't until Terrence Malick chose him to star in his lyrical World War Two epic, The Thin Red Line, that Hollywood found Brody.

"The pressure on that film was that I had to carry the movie with a cast of stars that I truly admired," he recalls. "Nick Nolte and Sean Penn in particular. You hear horror stories about Sean Penn, that he can be a real bastard if he doesn't admire your work." Having endured boot-camp and a protracted six-month shoot in the Australian outback, wearing "a filthy costume which they wouldn't wash," Brody returned to the US to discover his role as Corporal Fife had been drastically trimmed. Understandably, he remains bitter.

"I was so focused and professional, I gave everything to it, and then to not receive everything ... in terms of witnessing my own work. It was extremely unpleasant because I'd already begun the press for a film that I wasn't really in. Terry obviously changed the entire concept of the film. I had never experienced anything like that." Brody had initially been touted as the lead, based on the size of the role in the James Jones source novel - he learnt a valuable, if painful, Hollywood lesson. "You know the expression 'Don't believe the hype'? Well, you shouldn't." Since that time, Brody has chosen projects - Spike Lee's Summer of Sam aside - that will not resubmit him to media scrutiny. Barry Levinson's Liberty Heights, in which Brody played a Fifties Jewish Baltimore boy, came and went, while crime thriller Oxygen was restricted to US TV.

But, just maybe, Brody is ready for a second assault on the big-time. With four films on the way, he will next be seen as a war photographer in Harrison's Flowers, with Andie MacDowell - a chance, as he puts it, to "reclaim what I lost" on The Thin Red Line. His performance as a painfully shy ventriloquist in Dummy follows, and then a period swashbuckler with Hilary Swank and Christopher Walken. The latter meant learning to fence and ride. "I get to be a French 17th-century scoundrel," he grins.

Currently shooting in Germany, Brody also has the lead in Roman Polanski's The Pianist, a Warsaw ghetto-set story as personal to Polanski as Liberty Heights was to Levinson. A diverse slate by anyone's standards - I wonder whether he sees these as provocative choices. "Yes I do, actually," he says. "It's good to be able to be playful, a bit of a smart ass - it's fun. It would be terribly boring to be earnest."

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