Long before he would become a hot box office commodity and then later the broken star of his own real-life melodrama, Mel Gibson spent the first 12 years of his life in New York City. With little family background in performance, except for his grandmother’s history as an opera singer, Mel Gibson didn’t enter the arts until after his family moved to Australia following his father’s work accident and subsequent injury claim in 1968.
Sydney’s National Institute of Dramatic Art provided Mel Gibson with his classical acting training and theater exposure in Shakespearean plays like Romeo and Juliet and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. His film debut would come in 1977 with a small role that netted him $250 in Summer City, a locally produced film that mixed Australian surfers with murder. From there, he would continue his acting education at Adelaide’s State Theatre Company and take home the Australian Film Institute’s Best Actor in a Leading Role honors for Tim, in which he portrayed the mentally challenged character of the title.
Mel Gibson stars in mad max and lethal weapon
If 1979’s Tim brought Mel Gibson acting credibility, it was another effort that same year that would bring him box office clout and pave the way for international stardom. As the title hero in Mad Max, Mel Gibson became the face of a franchise that followed an enforcer enacting justice in a brutal post-apocalyptic vision of Australia. The film became one of the most popular films in Australian history and the appeal of its 1981 sequel, Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior, sped across international borders, establishing Mel Gibson as a global action star. At the same time, Mel Gibson would take on a series of well-received dramatic roles in Gallipoli and The Year of Living Dangerously for director Peter Weir.
Two years after the 1985 sequel, Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, Mel Gibson jump-started another successful franchise — this time in America. As Martin Riggs, the crazy loose cannon to Danny Glover’s Roger Murtaugh in Lethal Weapon, Mel Gibson was instrumental in bringing big action and big business back to the buddy action-comedy genre. While no one would ever mistake Lethal Weapon and its three subsequent sequels for Oscar-caliber material, the franchise delivered top-notch escapist entertainment to fans who were craving it. Outside of Lethal Weapon, Mel Gibson’s output ranged from formulaic (Bird on a Wire with Goldie Hawn) and curious (Hamlet as the title character) to fun (Maverick with Jodie Foster), often with strong box office returns.
Mel Gibson makes braveheart and the passion of the christ
After making his directorial debut with 1993’s The Man Without a Face and the formation of his own film company, Icon Productions, Mel Gibson directed and starred in the 1995 historical epic, Braveheart. In reenacting the story of Scottish hero William Wallace, Gibson created his most critically acclaimed film to date and at the peak of awards season, he walked away with the Oscars for Best Picture and Best Director. After becoming the talk of the Oscars, he returned to strictly acting projects like the kidnapping thriller Ransom for Ron Howard, the paranoia drama Conspiracy Theory with Julia Roberts, the historical drama The Patriot with Heath Ledger, and the sci-fi entry Signs with Joaquin Phoenix.
In 2004, Mel Gibson returned to directing for his most personal film, The Passion of the Christ. Bankrolled entirely from his own pocket, the intense cinematic portrait of Jesus Christ would become the highest-grossing film of Mel Gibson’s career and it received three Academy Award nominations. Though the film was widely praised, it also brought with it a high degree of controversy for elements that more critical observers felt were anti-Semitic in nature.
Mel Gibson’s dui arrest and attempted comeback in edge of darkness
The box office of The Passion of the Christ was louder than the controversy that came with it, but in 2006, his next PR hit became one of the year’s biggest stories. Having battled problems with alcohol since his teen years, Mel Gibson fell off the wagon in Malibu and was pulled over by officers for driving at nearly twice the speed limit with an open container of tequila as his passenger.
Besides failing a Breathalyser test and providing a mugshot that rivaled Nick Nolte’s, Mel Gibson was heard spouting a series of anti-Semitic remarks to the arresting officer. For his poor choices, he received three years of probation, and attempted to undo some of the damage through interviews with Diane Sawyer and apologies to Jewish organizations. He released his next directorial effort, Apocalypto, later that year before continuing his hiatus from acting for four more years.
In 2010, Mel Gibson attempted a career revival with a return to acting in the revenge thriller, Edge of Darkness. With a role that was well-suited to his acting style and a return to his rough-and-tumble characters of old, the film had the elements to be a career comeback, but audiences weren’t buying what Mel Gibson was selling. The movie fizzled at the box office and it wasn’t helped by combative media interviews where Gibson called one reporter an “a**hole” and mocked another one — all for making reference to his 2006 DUI incident. It would only get worse from there.
When mel gibson met oksana grigorieva
Following a messy separation and child custody dispute with his girlfriend, Oksana Grigorieva, Mel Gibson’s career went into full crisis mode when tapes were leaked containing a series of hate-filled rants from the actor to his ex. While 2009’s Stormy Celebrity Sound Byte champion Christian Bale was clearly caught up in the moment and not beyond a fair share of unintentional humor in his secret recording, Mel Gibson’s rants were aggressively racist and sexist in nature, with a tone that veered between dead serious, extremely agitated and genuinely frightening. Between allegedly making violent threats, admitting to physical abuse and uttering racist comments that any race would find offensive, Mel Gibson managed to upset just about everyone with the rants. As the release of the tapes continued, so did a police investigation into the matter and a possible prosecution against Mel Gibson, Oksana Grigorieva (for extortion) or both.
With two more films due for release — The Beaver for former costar and director Jodie Foster and the crime drama How I Spent My Summer Vacation — it remains to be seen whether these movies will ever see the light of day in theaters and whether Mel Gibson may be permanently entrenched in the depths of career failure and facing a prison sentence in due time.
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