See the full interview here...
No wonder his performance was so powerful, so compelling! He was, as a devout Christian and a humble man, "in the zone," as he put it, praying and meditating throughout the filming. As if that weren't enough, he suffered throughout the production of the final scenes of the film from a dislocated shoulder, pneumonia, vomiting and dehydration, and a life-threatening heart condition. He wasn't merely acting during the crucifixion scene; he was experiencing many elements of crucifixion that actually do the killing: dehydration, slow asphyxiation, congestive heart failure, and exposure. True, he wasn't actually beaten to a pulp by the troops of the Sanhedrin, scourged within an inch of his life by the Romans and experiencing the massive blood loss it caused, forced to carry the crossbeam to Golgotha, or actually nailed to the cross, but he suffered nonetheless.
Try to imagine what Jesus Himself went through. Jim Caviezel reported that he received a glancing blow from a flagrum during the scourging scene. That indirect strike was so violent that it instantly knocked him to the ground and left a fourteen-inch gash in his side. Pilate ordered that Jesus was to be punished, but that He was not to be killed. Jesus was subjected to 39 lashes, because under Roman law, 40 lashes with a flagrum was considered a death penalty. The blood loss, dehydration, shock, and the likelihood of infection following such a beating meant that 40 strokes were usually fatal.
And, just to put an exclamation point on his performance, Jim Caviezel gets hit by lightning at the end of filming, the odds of which in a given year are one in 1.19 million!
Jim Caviezel's performance was, in a word, stellar!