Mel Gibson: Playboy Interview

Mel Gibson is sitting in an editing bay in a small post production building in Hollywood, watching three computer monitors, all of which are running clips from his latest film, Braveheart. Gibson is producing, directing and starring in this story of William Wallace, a 13th century Scottish revolutionary who made a hobby of killing Englishmen and wound up being hanged, drawn and quartered at the age of 35. It's an epic that runs nearly three hours and is filled with bloody battle scenes, a dash of romance and more than a few of the sorts of glib, throwaway lines that fans of Gibson's Mad Max and Lethal Weapon trilogies have come to expect.

The editors have put together a promotional clip for Gibson—shots of Mel and co-star Sophie Marceau, of Mel in battle, of pillaging, of rampaging, of just Mel looking into the camera. "There's too much of me," Gibson complains. "It slows it down." He wants to take out the close-ups that don't move the action along. He runs his fingers through his nearly shoulder-length, unwashed hair, pulling at it so it stands almost straight up. He rubs his beard, which is white around the chin, and sticks a finger into his mouth to massage a tooth. He looks like a wild man rather than the handsome romantic lead who so captivated his co-stars Sigourney Weaver in The Year of Living Dangerously, Diane Keaton in Mrs. Soffel, Jodie Foster in Maverick, Michelle Pfeiffer in Tequila Sunrise, Sissy Spacek in The River, Goldie Hawn in Bird on a Wire and Jamie Lee Curtis in Forever Young.

Braveheart is Gibson's 22nd picture (not counting Disney's animated Pocahontas, for which he provides the voice of Captain John Smith). Over the past 18 years he has played sensitive romantics, tough, no-nonsense lawmen, glib rogues, con men and the bewildered son of a slain Danish king. He has that rare ability to work off actors such as Danny Glover, Anthony Hopkins, Kurt Russell and James Garner with the same enthusiasm and aplomb he has with his female co-stars. He's also not afraid to tackle roles made famous by actors such as Laurence Olivier (Hamlet), Garner (Maverick) and Clark Gable and Marlon Brando (The Bounty).

Gibson was born on January 3, 1956 in Peekskill, New York, the sixth child of Hutton and Anne Gibson. His father worked as a railroad brakeman for the New York Central Railroad until 1964, when he slipped on some oil and fell from a train, severely hurting his back. While awaiting the outcome of the resultant lawsuit he helped support his family by appearing on Jeopardy, winning $21,000 in 1968. That same year, with the Vietnam war threatening the lives of young American draftees, Hutton Gibson decided to move his family (which included ten children, with an eleventh soon to be adopted) to Australia. Although Hutton served in World War Two, he was also an opinionated, religious man who had seriously considered the priesthood. His ultraconservative Catholic views were imprinted on his children, and he has written books defining his position.

Unlike his father, Mel wasn't a reader. Instead, he watched such TV shows as the Mickey Mouse Club and Captain Kangaroo, and old Steve Reeves gladiator movies. As a high school student in Australia he was struck by the "reality and naturalism" of American films in the Seventies, including Sidney Lumet's "Serpico" and "Dog Day Afternoon" and Francis Coppola's first two "Godfather" films. At various times, he worked part-time in a supermarket, at Kentucky Fried Chicken and as an assistant juice mixer in an orange juice factory.

After high school he auditioned for the National Institute of Dramatic Arts in Sydney after an older sister filled out an application for him. When he was asked why he wanted to be an actor, he answered, "I've been goofing around all my life. I might as well get paid for it." While at NIDA he got a part as a surfer in a low-budget film called Summer City, which he didn't take so seriously as his fencing lessons and the Shakespeare he was learning. He acted in dozens of plays, including Waiting for Godot and Romeo and Juliet, in which he had the lead opposite Judy Davis. Off campus, he was a typical rowdy Aussie—he hung out at bars as much for the brawls as for the bourbon.

A week after one intense barroom beating, he auditioned for the part of Max Rockatansky in a futuristic film about a lone warrior cop and an unsavory motorcycle gang. Director George Miller saw in the beat-up face of the young Gibson the hero he was looking for. Although Gibson had only a minimal amount of dialogue, Mad Max brought him the kind of attention that Clint Eastwood got as the Man With No Name in his early spaghetti Westerns.

Gibson followed Mad Max with a surprisingly sensitive portrayal of a retarded handyman in Tim, based on Colleen McCullough's novel, for which he won the 1979 Australian Film Institute's Best Actor award. Two years later he worked with Peter Weir and George Miller (again), two of Australia's most renowned directors, in films that firmly established him as both a romantic leading man and the prototype of a new breed of action-adventure hero. He won a second Australian Film Institute Best Actor award for Weir's Gallipoli, an antiwar story of two Australian soldiers sent to fight in Turkey during World War One. And Miller's The Road Warrior perfected what he was attempting in Mad Max. The two films established Gibson as an international movie star.

Between 1982 and 1985 he played Biff in Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman at the Nimrod Theater in Sydney and made five pictures back-to-back: The Year of Living Dangerously, The Bounty, The River, Mrs. Soffel and the third and last of the Mad Max films, Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome. He then took some time off to recharge and came back as a smartass undercover cop in Lethal Weapon, his most commercially successful picture to date. Not all of his films were hits: Tequila Sunrise did moderate business, and Bird on a Wire and Air America bombed. His interpretation of Hamlet drew rave reviews but small crowds. In 1992 he appeared in Forever Young, a schmaltzy romance about a man who is frozen and comes back to life 50 years later. That film and Lethal Weapon 3 together grossed more than $200 million. In 1993 Gibson was named male star of the year by the National Association of Theater Owners. He made his directorial debut with The Man Without a Face, in which he played a disfigured man with a hidden past.

Gibson is intensely private and has avoided the media as much as possible. His wit and sometimes raunchy humor have gotten him into trouble with feminists and gays, who have demonstrated against him for remarks he claims he made in jest. His sense of humor leans toward the outrageous—"somewhere between discomfort and just hysterical laughter," he says.

Gibson has been married to Robyn Moore, a former nurse's aide, for 15 years and has kept her and their six children (ages 5 to 14) out of the spotlight. Until recently they made their home on an 800-acre ranch in Australia, but decided to move to California because, Gibson claims, "they don't know what to make of me down there."

His company, Icon Productions, employs 15 people who actively develop numerous projects for Gibson to produce, direct and act in. The recent Immortal Beloved, starring Gary Oldman as Beethoven, was an Icon production, as were five of Gibson's last six films (Hamlet, Forever Young, The Man Without a Face, Maverick and Braveheart).

To break through Gibson's protective wall, Playboy sent Contributing Editor Lawrence Grobel (who last interviewed Jean-Claude Van Damme) to visit with the star at his offices on the Warner Bros. lot in Burbank. Grobel's report:

"When I got this assignment I called some of the actresses who have worked with Mel, and they all told me the same thing: He's handsome, easy to work with and has a weird sense of humor. In person, Gibson seemed like a nice, cheery fellow, a one-of-the-guys type who just happened to appear in a few big films and became a star who could command many millions for a couple months' work.

"For journalists, Gibson has long been a challenge, claiming that he wants to keep his life as private as possible. We arranged to talk for two hours the first day and two more the next. We wound up talking for eight hours over those two days and had another session after that. He kept saying how much he disliked being interviewed, but only once did he ask to go off the record.

"The result is a surprisingly no-holds-barred conversation with a man who has not revealed himself in quite this way before. Gibson is full of controversial opinions and loves raunchy humor. And despite the fact that such attitudes can get you into trouble in these politically correct times, he proved to be refreshingly fearless."