Kiwi Cliff Curtis on his most shocking role — Jesus.

CLIFF Curtis is far too humble a bloke to say Jesus was the role he was born to play, but he will go so far as to call it a “lifelong wish”.“Jesus was my first superhero,” says the Kiwi actor and star of TV series Fear the Walking Dead, who grew up in Rotorua a devout Catholic. “I served mass seven days a week as an altar boy and through Easter I would serve twice a day. And wanted to be a priest. So when I
became an actor for many years it was a joke: What role do you want to play? I wanna be Jesus!

“But I felt that would never happen because ... I don’t have blue eyes. So when it came along it was a miracle, really.”The call came not from God, but from the producer of Risen, a movie that puts a different spin on the resurrection story, turning it into a kind of CSI mystery when a Roman officer (played by Joseph Fiennes) is ordered to investigate rumours that the so-called messiah (Curtis) has risen from the grave.