who urged the industry to give Gibson a second chance when he accepted the American Cinematheque award in 2011 . His portrayal of a mentally disabled handyman in the romance Tim (1979) earned Gibson the Australian Film Institute’s award for best actor. Gibson went on to star in Ransom (1996), Payback (1999), What Women Want and The Patriot (both in 2000), and We Were Soldiers (2002). For Gibson’s third directorial effort, he turned to the 1511 world of the Mayans to tell the story of Jaguar Paw, a tribesman who, after escaping from being the victim of a sacrifice, sets out to rescue his family from their Mayan village that is about to be destroyed. Whether he’s hired to voice an animated movie or not, I don’t really care,” Rich says, referring to “Chicken Run 2.

The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department launched a domestic violence investigation against Gibson, [152] later dropped when Gibson pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor battery charge. Peter Weir cast Gibson in the role of Frank Dunne, an Irish-Australian drifter with an intense cynicism about fighting for the British Empire. In fact, Gibson himself surprised many critics with his solid performance and, perhaps most impressively, more than held his own alongside such great actors as Glenn Close, Alan Bates and Paul Scofield. Eventually, he was chosen to star in the films Mad Max (1979) and Tim (1979), co-starring Piper Laurie. Thanks to the chemistry between Gibson and Helen Hunt, the out-there premise, actually manages to work as a romance.

His films in the first half of the decade were Forever Young, Lethal Weapon 3, Maverick, and Braveheart. After finding fame in Australia with only his second film, "Mad Max" (1979), Gibson vaulted onto the international scene with the superior sequel, "The Road Warrior" (1981). It was a definite decision to make a protest against the nuclear tests", said Gibson, who is mad at French President Jacques Chirac for deciding to detonate some bombs in the Pacific.

In an interview with Deadline Hollywood, Gibson expressed gratitude to longtime friends Whoopi Goldberg and Jodie Foster, both of whom had spoken publicly in his defense.Gibson got his breakthrough role as the leather-clad post-apocalyptic survivor in George Miller's Mad Max. In 2016, Mel Gibson received a 10-minute standing ovation at the Venice Film Festival where he premiered “Hacksaw Ridge,” which, propelled by a rapturous reception in Italy, went on to receive six Oscar nominations. He studied acting at the National Institute of Dramatic Art, where he starred opposite Judy Davis in a production of Romeo and Juliet.

He also competed at BAFTA for helming “Braveheart” and in Best Foreign Language Film for “Apocalypto. Director Jodie Foster opined that the film did not do well with American audiences because it was a dramedy, and "very often Americans are not comfortable with [that]". Gibson's roles in the Mad Max series of films, Peter Weir's Gallipoli (1981), and the Lethal Weapon series of films earned him the label of "action hero".in a Los Angeles stage production of Hamlet in January 2001, but Downey's drug relapse ended the project. Back in the day, Gibson said he wanted to kill Rich and his dog, saying, “I want his intestines on a stick.

In 1985, after working on four films in a row, Gibson took almost two years off at his Australian cattle station.Hacksaw Ridge was also nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Sound Editing, Best Sound Mixing, and Best Film Editing. He also played against type, as a grandfather—albeit a macho one—in the family comedy Daddy’s Home 2 (2017) and costarred with Sean Penn in The Professor and the Madman (2019), about the creation of The Oxford English Dictionary. While on a business trip to Singapore in September 2007, Gibson donated to a local charity for children with chronic and terminal illnesses.