Development The drama was conceived when
Lew Grade was received by
Pope Paul VI, who congratulated him on the making of
Moses the Lawgiver, a 1974 television film starring
Burt Lancaster and produced by Grade's
ITC Entertainment and the Italian television network
RAI. At the end of the interview, the Pope told him he hoped his next project would be about the life of Jesus. Two weeks later, while dining with an RAI executive, Grade told him he intended their companies to prepare such a film. The director rejected the proposal at first, but Grade finally convinced him to agree; he accepted the job shortly before Christmas 1973. Both Grade and Zeffirelli insisted their adaptation of Jesus's life should be "ecumenical", coherent, even to non-believers, and "acceptable to all denominations". To ensure the film's accuracy, the producers consulted experts from the
Vatican, the
Leo Baeck Rabbinical College of London, and the
Koranic School at
Meknes, Morocco. However, when Zeffirelli asked Rabbi
Albert Friedlander to help him create Jesus's
Bar Mitzvah scene, the latter replied that such ceremonies were practised only from the 15th century. The director, however, insisted on including it, and Friedlander tried to teach child actor Lorenzo Monet to read a short portion of the
Pentateuch in Hebrew. Monet, however, mumbled it and the director was not satisfied (in the film, boy Jesus reads mostly in English).
Casting Jesus The producers at first considered choosing a well-known star, who would draw a large audience, for the role of Christ. The first actor thought of was
Dustin Hoffman, and
Al Pacino was also a candidate. Zeffirelli decided to look for an actor whom the audience would immediately identify as Jesus. For example, Hoffman and Pacino both stand at just 5'6", and neither man's face bears a resemblance to Jesus as depicted in art, which has been based for many centuries on the image found on The Shroud of Turin. The image on the shroud is that of a man who is 6'. Eventually, the character's likeness was influenced by
Warner Sallman's portrait painting
Head of Christ: Paul Harvey and Edward J. Blum wrote the show "put Sallman's imagination in motion". The idea to cast
Robert Powell originated with Grade's wife, Kathie Moody, who told her husband the actor had "wonderful blue eyes" after watching his performance in a
BBC television adaptation of
Thomas Hardy's
Jude the Obscure. Powell came under criticism from religious groups for "living in sin" with his companion, dancer Barbara Lord of
Pan's People, while intending to portray Jesus. The couple married shortly before production began. As of 2025, Powell and Lord have been married for 50 years. Powell rarely blinks throughout the entire film, mimicking, in this respect,
H. B. Warner in 1927's
The King of Kings and
Max von Sydow in 1965's
The Greatest Story Ever Told. This effect was a deliberate decision by Zeffirelli. James Houlden commented that the result was "a penetrating, unrelenting eye contact with Jesus's." Powell's portrayal has since become an often-used image in popular devotional art, and "defined the visual image of Christ in the minds of the audience... Perhaps more than any other Jesus film." For the crucifixion scene, Powell starved himself on a diet of only cheese for twelve days prior to shooting "in order to look worn".
Filming Principal photography was carried out in
Morocco and
Tunisia from September 1975 to May 1976. The synagogue scenes were shot with extras from the Jewish community in the island of
Djerba. The city of
Monastir in Tunisia served as 1st-century Jerusalem.
Ernest Borgnine, who portrayed
Cornelius the Centurion, recalled that since regulations required hiring local extras—most with poor English—for many of the smaller roles, they had to be dubbed. Zeffirelli decided to avoid recording sound altogether in many parts, and simply send the principal actors to dub their own characters in the studio later. The standing sets were later used by the British comedy troupe
Monty Python for their 1979 religious satire
Life of Brian. The shoot of
Jesus of Nazareth in Tunisia coincided with the shooting of
Star Wars nearby. Actress
Koo Stark, who was filming
Star Wars on-site but was later cut from the film, stated that a problem with a radio-control transmitter caused a malfunctioning
R2-D2 to "run away," and the errant droid subsequently "wandered onto the set of
Jesus of Nazareth." Reports regarding the budget vary:
Presbyterian Survey stated $12 million;
The Listener cited
£9 million (roughly $16 million); and
Third Way with £11.5 million (roughly $20 million). Other sources give the sum of $18 million. ==Reception==