He's an excellent actor, covering an amazingly wide variety of roles. I still remember him in the Mad Max movies. My other favorite roles of him were in PAYBACK with Maria Bello, BRAVEHEART * one of my all time fave movies*, and in the LETHAL WEAPON movies.
As a director his movie THE PASSION rocked my world. It was one of the greatest movies I've ever seen, and in my opinion the best movie about Jesus Christ, with a lot of not very well known actors, and all the authentic old world languages of Hebrew, Aramaic and Latin. He's coming out with some strange new movie about the Aztecs or Mayans I think...a real epic.