James Caviezel was born and raised in Skagitt County, Washington. The Caviezels were a family of athletes, and James steered initially towards athletics, especially basketball. It wasn’t until an injured foot sidelined him that James began to develop other interests. His first acting gig was an undergraduate stage adaptation of the Frank Sinatra musical "Come Blow Your Horn". In the early 1980s he re-located to Los Angeles, working as a waiter and making the rounds of auditions.
 
He found small roles on popular TV shows like "Murder, She Wrote" and "The Wonder Years". He talked his way into his big screen debut as an airline reservations clerk in Gus Van Sant's My Own Private Idaho (1991) by pretending to be a recent Italian immigrant with a thick accent. He continued to get small roles in pictures like Diggstown (1992), Lawrence Kasdan's Wyatt Earp (1994), but he also began to be noticed. As “Slov” Slovnik in G.I. Jane (1997) he made his presence felt in several scenes of intense fraternization with co-star Demi Moore.