Mel Gibson

Mel Columcille Gerard Gibson (born January 3, 1956) is an American-Australian actor, Academy Award-winning director, producer and screenwriter. Born in the United States, Gibson moved to Australia when he was 12 years old and he later studied acting at the National Institute of Dramatic Art in Sydney. After establishing himself as a household name with the Mad Max and Lethal Weapon series, Gibson went on to direct and star in the Academy Award-winning Braveheart. Gibson's direction of Braveheart made him the sixth actor-turned-filmmaker to receive an Oscar for Best Director.In 2004, he directed and produced The Passion of the Christ, a blockbuster movie that portrayed the last hours of the life of Jesus. Gibson is an honorary Officer of the Order of Australia and was ranked the world's most powerful celebrity in the annual list by Forbes magazine in 2004.Gibson was born in Peekskill, New York, the sixth of eleven children. He is the second son of Hutton Gibson and Irish-born Anne Reilly Gibson. His paternal grandmother was the Australian opera soprano, Eva Mylott (1875–1920). One of Gibson's younger brothers, Donal, is also an actor. Gibson's first name comes from a 5th century Irish Saint, Mel, founder of the diocese of Ardagh which contains most of his mother's native County, while his second name, Columcille, is also linked to an Irish saint. Columcille is also the name of the parish in County Longford where Anne Reilly was born and raised. Because of his mother, Mel Gibson holds dual citizenship in America and the Republic of Ireland.Hutton Gibson relocated his family to Sydney, Australia in 1968, after winning $145,000 in a work related injury lawsuit against New York Central on February 14, 1968. The family moved when Gibson was twelve. The move to Hutton's mother's native Australia was for economic reasons and because he thought the Australian military would reject his oldest son for the Vietnam War draft.Gibson was educated by Christian Brothers at St. Leo's Catholic College in Wahroonga, New South Wales during his High School years.Gibson graduated from the National Institute of Dramatic Art in Sydney in 1977. His acting career began in Australia with appearances in television series, including The Sullivans, Cop Shop and Punishment. He made his film debut in the 1977 Australian film Summer City.In the next few years he also acted on stage for the Nimrod Theatre Company, Sydney, starring as Romeo (1979) and working with Warren Mitchell in Death of a Salesman (1982).Gibson's physical appearance made him a natural for leading male roles in action projects such as the "Mad Max" series of films, Peter Weir's Gallipoli, and the "Lethal Weapon" series of films. Later, Gibson expanded into a variety of acting projects including human dramas such as Hamlet, and comedic roles such as those in Maverick and What Women Want. His most artistic and financial success came with films where he expanded beyond acting into directing and producing, such as 1993's The Man Without a Face, 1995's Braveheart, 2004's Passion of the Christ and 2006's Apocalypto. Gibson was considered for roles in Batman, GoldenEye, Amadeus, Gladiator, The Golden Child, X-Men, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, Runaway Bride and Primary Colors. Actor Sean Connery once suggested Gibson should play the next James Bond to Connery's M. Gibson turned down the role, reportedly because he feared being typecast.On July 25, 1997, Gibson was named an honorary Officer of the Order of Australia (AO), in recognition of his "service to the Australian film industry". The award was honorary because substantive awards are made only to Australian citizens. In 1985, Gibson was named "The Sexiest Man Alive" by People, the first person to be named so. Gibson quietly declined the Chevalier des Arts et Lettres from the French government in 1995 as a protest against France's resumption of nuclear testing in the Southwest Pacific. Time magazine chose Mel Gibson and Michael Moore as Men of the Year in 2004, but Gibson turned down the photo session and interview, and the cover went instead to George W. Bush.Gibson got his breakthrough role as the leather-clad post-apocalyptic survivor in George Miller's Mad Max. The film was independently financed and had a reported budget of $300,000 AUD — of which $15,000 was paid to Mel Gibson for his performance. The film achieved incredible success, earning $100 million world wide. It held a record in Guinness Book of Records as the highest profit-to-cost ratio of a motion picture, and only lost the record in 2000 to The Blair Witch Project. The film was awarded four Australian Film Institute Awards in 1979.Gibson almost did not get the role that made him a star. His agent got him an audition for Mad Max, but the night before, he got into a drunken brawl with three men at a party, resulting in a swollen nose, a broken jawline, and various other bruises. Mel showed up at the audition the next day looking like a "black and blue pumpkin" (his own words). Mel did not expect to get the role and only went to accompany his friend. However, the casting agent told Mel to come back in two weeks, telling him "we need freaks." When Mel did come back, he was not recognized because his wounds had healed almost completely, and received the part. This incident is listed in Ripley's Believe It or Not!When the film was first released in America, all the voices, including that of Mel Gibson's character, were dubbed with U.S. accents at the behest of the distributor, American International Pictures, for fear that audiences would not take warmly to actors speaking entirely with Australian accents.The original film spawned two sequels: Mad Max 2 (known in North America as The Road Warrior), and Mad Max 3 (known in North America as Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome). A fourth movie, Mad Max 4: Fury Road, has been considered but has not been produced.In 1984, starred as Fletcher Christian in The Bounty. According to unauthorised biographer Wensley Clarkson, Gibson and costar Anthony Hopkins, did not get along during the shoot. At the time, Anthony Hopkins was a teetotaler[citation needed], and Mel Gibson was struggling with alcoholism. Gibson frequently spent his evenings in local saloons and took to mixing two shots of Scotch with his beer. He dubbed the concoction "Liquid Violence". In one incident, Gibson's face was severely cut up in a bar room brawl and the film's shooting schedule had to be rearranged while he was flown to a hospital in Papeete.Gibson moved into more mainstream commercial filmmaking with the popular buddy cop Lethal Weapon series, which began with the 1987 original. In the films he played LAPD Detective Martin Riggs, a recently widowed Vietnam veteran with a death wish and a penchant for violence and gunplay. In the films, he is partnered with a reserved family man named Roger Murtaugh (Danny Glover). This series would come to exemplify the action genre's so-called buddy film.The two actors were trained in two different schools of acting. Gibson is classically trained and Glover is a method actor. Three sequels were produced in 1989, 1992 and 1998.Gibson made the unusual transition from the action to classical genres, playing the melancholic Danish prince in Franco Zeffirelli's Hamlet. Gibson was cast alongside such experienced Shakespearean actors as Ian Holm, Alan Bates, and Paul Scofield. He described working with his fellow cast members as similar to being "thrown into the ring with Mike Tyson".The film met with critical and marketing success and remains steady in DVD sales. It also marked the transformation of Mel Gibson from action hero to serious actor and filmmaker.Gibson stated that when the Braveheart script arrived and was recommended by his agents, he rejected it outright because he thought he was too old to play the part. After careful thought, he decided that he wanted to direct the picture, and direct only. He finally agreed to act due to pressure from the film's producers.Gibson received five Academy Awards, Best Director and Best Picture, for his 1995 direction of Braveheart. In the movie, Gibson starred as Sir William Wallace, a 13th century martyr of Scottish nationalism.He said in interviews that he was attempting to make a film similar to the big screen epics he had loved as a child, such as Stanley Kubrick's Spartacus and William Wyler's The Big Country. The filming began in the Scottish Highlands. After learning that the intended filming locations were among the rainiest spots in Europe, the shooting was moved to the Republic of Ireland, where members of the Irish Army Reserve worked as extras in the film's many battles. The Battle of Stirling sequence in Braveheart is considered one of the best directed battle scenes in all of film history.In 2004 Gibson directed The Passion of the Christ which was based on the last twelve hours of the life of Jesus Christ according to the Four Evangelists and Roman Catholic Sacred Tradition. It was rendered multilingually in Aramaic, Hebrew, and Latin.Gibson co-wrote the screenplay with writer Benedict Fitzgerald and financed the film himself. The filming took place on location in Matera, Italy and Cinecittà Studios in Rome. Prior to making the film, Gibson constructed a traditionalist Catholic chapel on his California estate.Reviews were mixed, with critics ranging from praising the film for its realistic depiction of Jesus' final hours from a Catholic point of view and criticism of violence, manipulation and charges of anti-Semitism.Asked if his movie would "upset Jews", Gibson responded, "It's not meant to. I think it's meant to just tell the truth. I want to be as truthful as possible. Accusations of anti-Semitism were fueled by news reports that Mel Gibson's father, Hutton Gibson, is a vocal Sedevacantist who has alleged that much of the Holocaust is "fiction".After Frank Rich of the New York Times wrote against the unreleased film and called Gibson's publicist a “Holocaust denier defender,” Gibson was overheard by The New Yorker telling his publicist, "I want to kill him. I want his intestines on a stick. I want to kill his dog.On his decision to cut the scene in which Caiaphas says his blood be on us and on our children. soon after Pontius Pilate washes his hands of Jesus, GI wanted it in. My brother said I was wimping out if I didn't include it. But, man, if I included that in there, they'd be coming after me at my house. They'd come to kill me.It's one little passage, and I believe it, but I don't and never have believed it refers to Jews, and implicates them in any sort of curse. It's directed at all of us, all men who were there, and all that came after. His blood is on us, and that's what Jesus wanted. But I finally had to admit that one of the reasons I felt strongly about keeping it, aside from the fact it's true, is that I didn't want to let someone else dictate what could or couldn't be said.The movie grossed US$611,899,420 worldwide and $370,782,930 in the US alone, a figure, at that time, surpassed any motion picture starring Gibson. It became the eighth highest-grossing film in history and the highest-grossing rated R film of all time. The film was nominated for an Academy Award for Original Music Score, Best Cinematography, and Best Makeup at the 77th Academy Awards and won the People's Choice Award for Best Drama.Gibson's next historical epic, Apocalypto, was released to theaters on December 8, 2006. The film is set in Mesoamerica, during the fifteenth century. It focuses on the decline of the Maya civilization which reached its zenith around 600 AD, collapsed around 900 AD, and fell into a period of competing city states until the Conquistadors invaded. Dialogue is spoken in the Yucatec Maya language. It features a cast of actors from Mexico City, the Yucatán, and some Native Americans from the United States.While Gibson financed the film himself, Disney released it in specific markets.The film is set against the turbulent end times of the once great Maya civilization.The title is a Greek term which means "an unveiling" or "new beginning", but the movie is not religiously themed or connected to the biblical Apocalypse.Gibson pre-screened Apocalypto to two predominantly Native American audiences in Oklahoma, at the Riverwind Casino in Goldsby, owned by the Chickasaw Nation, and at Cameron University in Lawton.In December 2006, Gibson told "The Sun" newspaper that he does not want to act in another film, because he wants to just direct movies. In March 2007, Gibson told a screening audience that he was preparing another script with Farhad Safinia about the writing of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED). Gibson's company has long owned the rights to The Professor and the Madman, which tells the story of the creation of the OEDGibson has dismissed the rumors that he is considering directing a film about Spanish explorer Vasco Núñez de Balboa.[27][28][29] Asked in September 2007 if he planned to return to acting and specifically to action roles,I think I’m too old for that, but you never know. I just like telling stories. Entertainment is valid and I guess I’ll probably do it again before it's over. You know, do something that people won’t get mad with me for.