Mel Gibson is an American actor and filmmaker.
His full name is Mel Colmcille Gerard Gibson.
He was born on January 3, 1956, in Peekskill, New York.
Mel is the sixth of eleven children, and the second son of Hutton Gibson and Anne Patricia (née Reilly).
His mother was Irish, from County Longford, while his American-born father is of mostly Irish descent.
Because of his mother, Gibson retains dual Irish and American citizenship.
Mel and his family moved to Australia in the late 1960s, settling in New South Wales, where Mel’s paternal grandmother, contralto opera singer Eva Mylott, was born.
In 1974 he enrolled in the National Institute of Dramatic Art in Sydney, and while at school he made his film debut playing a surfer in Summer City (1977) for which he was paid $400.
After graduating in 1977, he joined the State Theatre Company of South Australia.
In 1979 he starred as a renegade cop seeking revenge in the futuristic action film Mad Max. He was paid $15,000 for this role. Mad Max became the biggest commercial success of any previously released Australian film, grossing more than $100 million worldwide.
After Mad Max, Gibson also played a mentally slow youth in the film Tim (1979). For his performance in the film, Gibson earned his first Australian Film Institute Award, for best actor.
Director Peter Weir cast Gibson as one of the leads in the critically acclaimed World War I drama Gallipoli (1981), which earned Gibson another Best Actor Award from the Australian Film .
Gibson wouldn’t become internationally famous, however, until after his performance in Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior (1981), one of the few sequels to have proved superior to its predecessor.
His second collaboration with Peter Weir, The Year of Living Dangerously (1982), featured the actor in his first romantic lead, alongside Sigourney Weaver.
In 1984, Gibson took on the role of Fletcher Christian in The Bounty (1984), which co-starred Anthony Hopkins.
Mel Gibson’s first American film was Mark Rydell’s 1984 drama The River, in which he and Sissy Spacek played struggling Tennessee farmers.
Gibson earned his first million dollar salary for playing Max Rockatansky for the third time, in Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome in 1985.
After a two-year break, Gibson returned to the screen with the blockbuster hit Lethal Weapon (1987), playing volatile cop Martin Riggs opposite Danny Glover, who portrayed by-the-book character Roger Murtaugh. The success of Lethal Weapon inspired three sequels—Lethal Weapon 2 (1989), Lethal Weapon 3 (1992) and Lethal Weapon 4 (1998).
In 1988 Gibson started in a crime thriller film Tequila Sunrise, co-starring Michelle Pfeiffer and Kurt Russell.
Gibson next starred in three films back-to-back: Bird on a Wire, Air America, and Hamlet; all were released in 1990. Hamlet was the first film made by his production company, ICON Productions.
In 1993 he made his directorial debut with The Man Without a Face, in which he also starred.
Gibson next directed the epic Braveheart (1995), in which he portrayed the Scottish national hero Sir William Wallace. The film won five Academy Awards, including best picture and best director.
He then starred in Ransom (1996), Conspiracy Theory (1997), and Payback (1999).
In 2000, Gibson started in the highly anticipated war saga The Patriot, in which he played a reluctant hero during the American Revolution. That same year he appeared in What Women Want, and lend his voice for the animated comedy Chicken Run.
In 2002, Gibson appeared in the Vietnam War drama We Were Soldiers and M. Night Shyamalan’s science fiction thriller Signs, which became the highest-grossing film of Gibson’s acting career. While promoting Signs, Gibson said that he no longer wanted to be a movie star and would only act in film again if the script were truly extraordinary.
Gibson returned to directing with The Passion of the Christ (2004), an account of the last 12 hours of Jesus Christ’s life that was based primarily on the biblical Gospels, with dialogue in Aramaic and Latin.
In 2006, he directed the action-adventure film Apocalypto, his second film to feature sparse dialogue in a non-English language. The violent film was set during the collapse of the Mayan empire and featured dialogue in Mayan.
In 2010, Gibson appeared in Edge of Darkness, which marked his first starring role since 2002 and was an adaptation of the BBC miniseries, Edge of Darkness.
The following year he portrayed a depressed man whose life is invigorated by his use of a hand puppet in the drama The Beaver (2011).
In 2012, Gibson appeared in the neo noir crime thriller Get the Gringo directed by Adrian Grunberg. The film has received largely positive reviews.
Than Gibson played two villains: Voz in Machete Kills in 2013, opposite Danny Trejo, and Conrad Stonebanks in The Expendables 3 opposite Sylvester Stallone in 2014.
In 2016 Gibson started in the action crime thriller film Blood Father directed by Jean-François Richet, written by Peter Craig based on his novel of the same name.
He returned to directing with Hacksaw Ridge (2016), a biopic about Desmond T. Doss, a conscientious objector who served as an army medic during World War II. The critically acclaimed drama earned an Academy Award nomination for best picture, and Gibson received an Oscar nomination for his direction.
Mel Gibson has an estimated net worth of $425 million.
Mel Gibson married Robyn Denise Moore, a dental nurse on June 7, 1980 in a Roman Catholic Church in Forestville, New South Wales. Together they have a daughter and six sons. They separated in 2006 after 26 years of marriage and finally got divorced in 2011. Robyn Moore has been awarded half his $850 million fortune in their divorce settlement.
In 2009, he began dating Grigorieva and had a daughter, Lucia with her. They split up a year later.
As of 2014, Gibson is in a relationship with former champion equestrian vaulter and writer Rosalind Ross. Ross gave birth to their son, and Gibson’s ninth child on January 20, 2017 in Los Angeles.
Gibson was raised a Sedevacantist traditionalist Catholic. When asked about the Catholic doctrine of Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus, Gibson replied, “There is no salvation for those outside the Church … I believe it.
Gibson has his own private chapel in his grounds, where he attends mass every day.
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.
Gibson is a property investor, with multiple properties in Malibu, California, several locations in Costa Rica, a private island in Fiji and properties in Australia.
Gibson has struggled with alcoholism. He has said that he started drinking at the age of 13.
As a director, he sometimes breaks the tension on set by having his actors perform serious scenes wearing a red clown nose.
His voice in Mad Max (1979) was dubbed for the film’s US release.
He was named after the Church of St. Mel in Clonmel, Co. Tipperary, Ireland where his mother’s family is from.
In Portuguese, “Mel” means “honey”.