Actress Catherine Lidstone was hiking near her home in Los Angeles when she learned of an opportunity that, eventually, would make her face seen by millions.
It was on that hike that she bumped into an actor friend who had just landed a role in a new Bible-based television series, The Chosen. At the time, she was filming a series on Fox, Proven Innocent, but the possibility of appearing in a faith-based project about Jesus piqued her interest. After all, it aligned with her Christian faith. It also would provide another job.
“He was like, ‘I have no idea where this is gonna go, if it's gonna succeed or fail. It's a pilot… It's very low budget.’”
Lidstone wasn’t deterred by the series’ obscurity. She asked her manager to investigate. After an unsuccessful audition for the second season, she won the role of Mary of Bethany, better known as Mary of “Mary and Martha,” beginning in the third season. That role placed her in multiple episodes but also in two major scenes from Scripture: Mary listening to Jesus as her sister complains and, later, Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead. She calls the role a “big gift.”
The series has grown from a low-budget pilot to a multi-million-dollar global hit.
“We're just amazed at the success that the show has reached,” she told ChristianHeadlines. “...It has, obviously, really reached people’s hearts.”
The Chosen isn’t her only faith-based project. Lidstone portrays a lead character in the new movie Forty-Seven Days with Jesus, which follows a couple who are facing marital strife but are reconnected when they tell their children the story of Jesus’ final days on Earth. Lidstone’s character, Juliana, is “trying to get her family to operate in a loving and capable way” but, unfortunately, her husband is facing trials at work that are impacting their day-to-day life, Lidstone said.
“Hope is found because they don’t give up on each other,” she said.
Lidstone’s personal faith grew as an adult, she said.
“I found [faith] through just a series of events that I think God ordained,” she said. “...I just think a lot of things happened outside of my own design, to recall me back. I'm very grateful.”
Her former agent, who went into full-time ministry, had a major impact on her life, she said. Lidstone began attending her church.
“That church has a lot of wonderful programming,” she told Christian headlines. “...They have a course that takes you through the entire Bible from start to finish. So Genesis to Revelation -- it’s a two-year course. And I took that course. And I think that course is really what changed my life. I had never read the full Bible before that, and reading it gives you just a wonderful perspective of life on this earth that I never would have had otherwise.”
The Bible, she said, is “really, truly, a love letter to humanity from God.”
“It's not easy to read. And there's a lot of questions I think we have as modern people that are very difficult to fight with and wrestle with,” she said. “But I think that's part of what God is -- He wants you to seek that out through Him. He wants you to ask those questions. He wants you to go through your seasons of doubting Him and come to the end of it, hopefully with, ‘I love You and I trust You because You first loved me.’”
Image credit: The Chosen
Michael Foust has covered the intersection of faith and news for 20 years. His stories have appeared in Baptist Press, Christianity Today, The Christian Post, the Leaf-Chronicle, the Toronto Star and the Knoxville News-Sentinel.
