Gibson On Turning Down Scorsese’s “Christ”

Universal Pictures
Back in the early 1980s, long before he was known as a filmmaker, Mel Gibson was primarily known as a young and upcoming Australian actor.

At this time Gibson was known for his breakthrough performances in “Mad Max,” “Gallipoli,” “Tim” and “The Year of Living Dangerously” with notable turns in “The Bounty” and “Lethal Weapon” still to come.

Somewhere around this time, it turns out he was contacted by then also rising filmmaker Martin Scorsese who had great success with a string of acclaimed films including “Mean Streets,” “Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore,” “Taxi Driver,” and “Raging Bull” among others.

Appearing on a recent episode of The Joe Rogan Experience to promote his latest directorial effort “Flight Risk,” Gibson spoke about how he was approached by Scorsese to star in a religious film, a role Gibson quickly turned down despite being a famously religious man:

“Interestingly enough, I was in a hotel room in the Savoy and I had food poisoning. I was near dead from it. I ate a bad oyster in London and I was dying in a hotel room and I couldn’t even leave. It was the worst.

While I was there, Scorsese calls the room and says, ‘Come here, I want to talk to you.’ I go and I talk to Martin and he’s in his room and all the windows, the screens, he’s drawn on. He’s got 18 different TVs going on at the same time in this dark room. He’s talking to me about ‘The Last Temptation of Christ’ and he wants me to play Jesus and I said, ‘Wow. I’m not doing that.’”

Willem Dafoe ended up scoring the role of Jesus in the final film which was ultimately released in 1988. Gibson of course went on to make the ultimate box-office hit movie about Jesus with “The Passion of the Christ” which ended up earning $612 million at the global box-office from a $30 million budget. That film had Jim Caviezel in the lead role, and Gibson spoke about why he was so right for that role:

“He [Caviezel] did something that I think nobody else did and I think he pulled it off because I totally believed it. He emptied himself out. He invited something else in. He meditated and let Christ in.”

A sequel to “The Passion of the Christ,” titled “The Resurrection,” has long been in development. Update: A quote from Gibson misattributing the subject of that quote has been corrected.