…built his own multimillion-dollar church in Malibu… (INFphoto.com)
…and publicly defended his Holocaust-skeptic dad. (Kylie Gibson)
He’s threatened his ex-girl-friend’s life, hit her and bruised their infant daughter, insulted blacks, Jews and gays, and admitted he’s almost broke and has no friends. (Allegedly.) The world has heard him panting, ranting, cursing and laughing maniacally on recordings that were leaked online last week.
What happened to Mel Gibson?
Just six years ago, Gibson was No. 1 on Forbes magazine’s Celebrity 100 List. His films have grossed more than $2 billion worldwide. Upon the US release of the post-apocalyptic thriller “Mad Max” in 1980, Gibson became an instant movie star, his brutish masculinity a bracing alternative to the softer, less matinee idol-like leading men of the 1970s — Dustin Hoffman, Jon Voight, Gene Hackman.
MORE: GIBSON’S OZ-BOUND: PAPER
Born and raised in upstate New York, he and his family moved to Australia when he was 12; as a result, he seemed familiar yet exotic, affable in life but dangerous on film. Perhaps most unusually, he was vocal about his devout Catholicism and, not long after “Mad Max” made him a worldwide sensation at age 24, he married a dental nurse named Robyn Moore and started a family.
For a man who was soon nominated for Oscars, playing opposite Michelle Pfeiffer and Julia Roberts, and named People magazine’s first-ever “Sexiest Man Alive” in 1985, Gibson seemed impossibly normal, domesticated, down-to-earth, devoted to his wife and ever-expanding family of, ultimately, seven children.
Thatไ version of Mel Gibson, it turns out, was hiꦦs finest acting work yet.
“I don’t think this [scandal] comes as any great surprise,” said an industry source. “The tone and the language used [on the tapes] — people have heard that before.”
“People close to him knew the true Mel,” said another. “They knew he was anti-Semitic. He had a reputation on sets for being sexist.”
The signs that all was not well have long been there, way before he left his wife of 28 years for the now-40-year-old Oksana Grigorieva, who gave birth to the couple’s daughter, Lucia, in October 2009. Gibson began drinking at age 13. The night before auditioning for “Mad Max,” he wound up in a bar fight that left him with a broken jaw. (He won the lead in a later audition.)
In 1984, Gibson was banned from driving in Ontario for three months after he was involved in an alcohol-induced fender-bender. While filming the 1989 action-comedy “Lethal Weapon 2,” Gibson told the director that he was drinking five pints of beer a day, for breakfast.
In 1991, he blasted homosexuals to a Spanish publication, “With this look, who’s going to think I’m gay? . . . Do I talk like them? Do I move like them?” The quote was picked up elsewhere, and although Gibson refused to apologize, the controversy abated. He also checked into rehab for his drinking.
🎐 Gibson was ꦬalso helped by a well-crafted public persona: that of a charming rogue who was faithful to his nonfamous wife and engaged easily with regular people.
THAT all changed in 2003, in the run-up to the release of his controversial film “The Passion of the Christ.” Gibson denied the film was anti-Semitic, although he told The New Yorker that he wanted to make it clear that Jews were responsible for the death of Christ but he knew it wasn’t politically correct. He also admitted that he’d been suicidally depressed in his mid-30s.
Gibson also said God told him to make the movie, that the Holy Ghost directed it, and that anyone who wasn’t a true Catholic — his wife included — wasn’t going to heaven. (Finding the post-Vatican II Church too liberal, he formed his own sect, and built his own church on his own property — in essence, becoming his own pope.)
He also refused to renounce his father’s claims that the Holocaust has been greatly exaggerated. “I don’t want to be dissing my father,” Gibson said. “He never denied the Holocaust; he just said there were fewer than 6 million” Jews killed.
“The Passion of the Christ,” which Gibson produced for $30 million, grossed more than $600 million worldwide.
Despite that consistent record of anger, drunkenness and bigotry, most people were shocked when, four years ago, Gibson was pulled over for driving under the influence in California and further charged with calling a female police officer “sugar t–s.” He also said, “F–king Jews . . . the Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world,” before asking another cop, “Are you a Jew?”
In the aftermath, Gibson released a statement in which he apologized for his behavior and blamed the alcohol for him saying “things that I do not believe to be true and which are despicable.”
In October, he gave a TV interview to Diane Sawyer in which he said all the right𒁃 things but seemed to resent having to say them.
It worked, though: Gibson kept a low profile, and in 2006 directed “Apocalypto,” which he produced for $40 million. It grossed more than $120 million worldwide. His most recent film, “Edge of Darkness,” released in January, has grossed $43 million — a respectable take for a middling thriller, proof that the public was willing to forgive.
Then came the tapes. His reps have refused comment, as has almost everyone who has ever worked with Gibson. “Hollywood’s like high school, and celebrities are the ‘in’ crowd,” said David Perel, founder and executive VP of RadarOnline.com. “They don’t like to criticize each other.”
The only celebrity to offer a defense last week, Whoopi Goldberg, 𝓀suffered immediate blowba🅺ck.
Gibson’s sole loss, so far, has been the decision by agent Ari Emanuel, brother of White House Chief of Staff Rahm and one of the most powerful people in Hollywood, to drop Gibson as his client.
The fate of Gibson’s next film, “The Beaver,” directed by Jodie Foster — one of the few to publicly defend Gibson in 2006 — remains unclear. Foster, this time, has refrained from commenting.
ON the tapes released last week, Gibson says he’s broke, reduced to selling his LA Lakers seats and art collection, and can’t pay his credit-card bills because he has to pay his taxes. Much of his money appears tied up in real estate, which he’s having trouble unloading in the current downturn.
His divorce isn’t yet final, but California is a community-property state, so Robyn Gibson will likely get 50 percent of the couple’s fortune.
“I think his wife must have been a very grounded person,” said Barbara Kirwin, a prominent clinical and forensic psychologist who specializes in domestic-violence cases. “He really unraveled after he left her.”
Kirwin finds parallels to other famous men who’ve had recent and spectacular mid-life meltdowns: Tiger Woods, Charlie Sheen, John Edwards, Eliot Spitzer.
“This is not the garden-variety guy who comes home from the gas station and belts his wife around,” said Kirwin. “These guys” — famous, rich, powerful, revered — “unravel in ways that leave the public aghast. I think domestic violence is only part of Mel Gibson’s situation. He’s in the process of imploding. It’s like he’s tired of being Mel Gibson. I don’t think it’s the end for this guy.”
Radar Online’s Perel can guarantee that it’s not the end for Gibson, at least through this coming week. He told The Post that the Web site has at least 30 minutes of recordings in total.
As for what wi🌞ll happen to Gibson: If the DA decides to press charges, he could face anywhere from two to 10 years in prison.
“He probably won’t go to jail,” said Kirwin, who herself has been involved in similar cases involving celebrities. “This is a domestic situation. The lawyers will talk.”
“Besides,” she added, “jail is not the place for this guy. A secure hospital is.”