Jim Caviezel: He Got Game

"How do you like the acting business now?"

"I love it. It's become the basketball of my life. A great player reacts. He'll come down the court and react to the defense. To do that, he has to be focused on the other players. Acting is the same. An actor listens, watches, reacts. You never know where it's going to go. I love the spontaneity."

In Frequency, Caviezel plays a moody, depressed cop who makes celestial radio contact with his firefighter father (Quaid) who died several years before. "A few months before I read the script, my dad had open-heart surgery," Caviezel says. "I thought I was going to lose him and I told him, 'I'm scared.' And he said, 'If you don't believe in everything I taught you about where I'm going when I die, then everything I taught you doesn't mean a thing.' After he said that, I was fine. That bond with my dad---and then seeing the script--made me want to do the film."

Just then Caviezel looks up at the TV (we're in Jerry's Famous Deli and the Laker game is on) and says, "My gosh, Shaq just made another free throw. I know how he's doing it. He's practicing with a glove to keep the ball off" his palm."

"Do you still play?" I ask.

"Off and on. I played once with Magic. Now his eyes light up, and he becomes as animated as I think he gets. "At the Spectrum Club. I was on his team, Boy, he makes the game fun." It takes Caviezel a few moments to emerge from this reverie. Then he says, "I could sit and talk to Magic for hours."

"What would you talk about?"

"About weathering the storms. When the other team is hot, how do you deal with that? You have to deal with it in Hollywood, too. How do you weather the storm of not getting roles? Bad days are going to happen. You have to suffer it you're going to reach the heights. Is your self-esteem high enough to carry you through?"

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Jeffrey Lantos interviewed Sela Ward for the February issue of Movieline.

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