Gibson, Mel (1956—)

American-born, Australian-reared actor Mel Gibson has remained one of the world's most popular film stars for nearly 20 years, and his reputation as a producer and director is on the ascendancy in the late 1990s. With his natural good looks, highlighted by piercing blue eyes, his rich speaking voice, and humorous "bad boy" manner, he long ago went beyond the label People magazine placed on him in 1985 as their first ever "Sexiest Man Alive."

Gibson first came to international attention in his second picture, the low-budget 1979 Australian film Mad Max. As Max Rockatansky, a highway patrolman living in postapocalyptic Australia, the then 23-year-old Gibson was a bit wooden, but his screen charisma, good looks, and emotional intensity were a hit with audiences throughout the world. Despite the fact that Gibson's then-strong Australian accent was dubbed by an American for U.S. release, the film has remained a cult favorite. Gibson has maintained the "Mad Max" mantle, portraying characters on the edge, from Lethal Weapon's Martin Riggs, his most financially successful characterization, to Scottish patriot William Wallace in Braveheart to the lovable paranoid cabby Jerry Fletcher in Conspiracy Theory.

Following Mad Max, Gibson appeared in several more Australian films. He won an Australian Academy Award for Best Actor for Tim, a sentimental love story about a slow-witted man who falls in love with a middle-aged business woman. This was followed in 1981 by an outstanding performance in Peter Weir's antiwar masterpiece Gallipoli and an enormously popular cult film The Road Warrior (released internationally as Mad Max 2).

Although Gibson's early post-Australian films were critically and financially mixed, his reputation grew internationally. Some of his early U.S. films faltered at the box office: The River, Mrs. Soffel, The Bounty, and the Australian-made Warner Brothers release Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome were made within an 18-month period in the mid-1980s, and only Thunderdome proved financially successful.

The stress of work, success, and long separations from his wife and growing young family proved troublesome for Gibson personally. An arrest for drunk driving in Toronto while filming Mrs. Soffel and subsequent bouts of erratic behavior and drinking almost brought his career to an end and earned Gibson the moniker "Mad Mel." To address his problems, Gibson returned to his ranch in Australia and did not make any pictures for almost two years. His next film, the 1987 Richard Donner-directed Lethal Weapon, costarring Danny Glover, proved to be his greatest career success to that time and placed him on the level of solid international stardom.

In the early 1990s, Gibson moved permanently from Australia to the United States and began to take charge of his career, moving into the area of producing and directing. With partner Bruce Davey, Gibson had formed Icon Productions in 1989. In addition to producing or coproducing many of Gibson's own star vehicles, Icon turned out more than a dozen films in the late 1990s, including some small films ranging from Immortal Beloved to 87. Its most financially and critically successful film was Gibson's second directorial effort, Braveheart (1995), which grossed more than $200 million worldwide and earned five Oscars, two of which went personally to Gibson, as director and as producer, along with Davey and Hollywood veteran Alan Ladd.

Following on the heels of Braveheart's success, Gibson immediately made the intense action drama Ransom, directed by Ron Howard. The film was an immediate hit, earning more than $300,000 worldwide and bringing Gibson his first Golden Globe Award nomination as best actor. The period 1994-1997 was a high point in Gibson's career, with three of his films earning more than $1 million domestically, including a fourth installment of the Lethal Weapon series. In addition, Gibson cemented his position as a Hollywood mainstay by winning his second People's Choice award for favorite actor and a firm position either at the top or near the top of the annual Harris Poll of America's favorite actors and the world's list of top box-office stars.

On the personal side, unlike most Hollywood stars, Gibson has maintained a solid life away from show business, having married his wife, Robyn Moore, in 1980 and produced seven children. Gibson's religious and political views remain conservative, and his Catholicism has led him to espouse views often unpopular in Hollywood against abortion rights and abortion. His highly publicized distaste for political correctness, love of practical jokes, and bad puns have sometimes gotten him into trouble, as have comments that have occasionally labeled him as anti-feminist and anti-gay.

In early 1999, Gibson and Davey made the decision to move Icon from Warner Brothers (which had been the headquarters since the company was founded and had been Gibson's primary studio for more than a decade) to the Paramount lot in Hollywood, where Gibson had recently completed work on the film noir Payback, whose tagline was "prepare to root for the bad guy." In addition to his contacts with Paramount, and the possibility of releasing at least one additional film as part of his 1996 deal with Warner, Gibson and Davey were partnered with Rupert Murdoch in a new Australian studio, planned as the site of Gibson's next directorial effort, an adaptation of Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451.

—Steve Hanson

Further Reading:

Clarks, Wesley. Mel: The Inside Story. London, Blake Publishing Ltd., 1993.

Grobel, Lawrence. "Mel Gibson." Playboy. July 1995, 51-63.

McCarthy, John. The Films of Mel Gibson. Secaucus, New Jersey, Citadel Press, 1997.

Pendereigh, Brian. Mel Gibson and His Movies. London, Bloomsbury Publishing, 1997.

Ragan, David. Mel Gibson. New York, Dell Publishing, 1985.