Mel's on the warpath again

Mel Gibson, says Tequila Sunrise screenwriter Robert Towne, 'is more like a guy than any guy I have ever met'. A man's man, he only ever eats meat if it's 'red'. An eminent prankster, he sent Julia Roberts freeze-dried rats almost daily on the set of Conspiracy Theory (1997) because he likes to hear women scream. As a youngster, he stapled his sister's head. Contrary to mythology, Mel Gibson is American. Born in New York in 1956, he emigrated with his family to Australia at the age of 12. With an Irish Catholic mother and an Australian-born, devout Catholic father, he's the sixth of 12 children (one is adopted).

A hard-drinking, chain-smoking teenager, Mel became an archetypal Angry Young Man and failed to graduate from Sydney's National Institute for Dramatic Arts. Then, aged 23, he got an audition for Mad Max. Typically, a few days before it he had a punch-up in a bar with three rugby types over a girl and woke up with a 'bloody nose, head stitches, jaw off the hook, peeing blood'. Two days later, he was Mad Max himself, kick-starting his vertical career curve and a reputation as a hell-raising wild card. The overnight exposure, he says, was an awful shock.

'There's no degree you can take for fame. There is nobody who comes with this contract: "OK, you are now a public person, you have no anonymity whatsoever and if anybody tries to insult you or defame you in a public place they have a perfect right to do that, because you're a celebrity and you got it coming." So when this first started to happen, I was outraged. I was like, "How can they get away with that? I think I'll just walk into the Toronto Times and machine-gun everybody..."'

Like so many wayward men, Mel Gibson was saved by his wife, Robyn, an ex-dental nurse, whom he married in 1980. 'Oh God, yes, oh yeah,' he nods, vigorously. 'If she wasn't around, I'd have been long dead. I've often thought, "Wow, if it wasn't that I had responsibilities here, with kids and everything, I probably would have gone waaay out there." You have to consider others. And sometimes they have to get in your face and say [bawls], "Consider meeeeee!" So you get the message. "Oh yeah, you, yeah! I promised I'd take care of you for your whole life... All right!'''

Back in the early Eighties, while he was shaping up to be globally considered to be the Sexiest Man Alive, Gibson would knock back five beers before breakfast. 'You drink to escape,' he says ruefully. He also became a serial drunk-driver; 'completely intoxicated... insanity.' In 1985, at Robyn's behest, Gibson left Hollywood altogether, spending two years on his 800-acre cattle ranch in Australia. He returned in 1987, to make the first of the Lethal Weapon films, turning suicidal tendencies into class-act comedy caper.

We talk about his life-long self-destructive streak.

'Oh, I think we're born that way.'

'Everyone?'

'I think everyone has a degree of it, yes,' he says, 'because we're born to die. I think a lot of us are compelled to dip into degrees to get to it faster than others. It's absolutely true. How many times have things been going just swell so you decide to ruin it on purpose? What's that about? That's self-sabotage. And that's human nature.'

It's been many years since Mel Gibson sabotaged himself or anything else. A one-man gossip-column desert, he's been married for 22 years, owns five homes and has seven children: Hannah (21), Edward and Christian (twins, 19), William (17), Louis (14), Milo (11) and Thomas (three). He finds his teenage sons 'pretty funny, they walk around thinking, "Dad's an idiot." I know they do. I did.' Some years back, Hannah announced she was having her bellybutton pierced. Dad didn't approve.

'I didn't dig it,' he admits. 'And she did it anyway. C'mahn!'

Talking about Hannah, he becomes the clich?d, misty-eyed 'Pop'. 'I've had the blessing of seeing her become a young woman who I am extremely proud of,' he twinkles. 'She knocks my socks off sometimes, with the things that come out of her mouth and the actions she performs. Absolutely fantastic.'

Mel's sons are just like any other boys; they listen to 'all the junk'. Then again, Mel likes 'the Seattle bands they introduced me to in the Nineties, the Pearl Jams and who's that guy... Kurt Coldbrains [cocks two fingers at temple]. Pwffff!' They wear, of course, colossal pantaloons.

'All their asses are hangin' out,' snorts Mel. 'I give up, y'know? At Christmas time I buy 'em all a belt. "Start wearing this, I'll get you a real present." Heheheh! In fact, that's a great gag, I'll get 'em all belts! I haven't done that yet, but I will this year...'

'Do you ever think acting is ridiculous? In as much as it's what children can do, naturally?'

'Uuum... Noo!' he hoots. 'I have had times when I've felt, "This is stoopid, this is no kind of adult occupation." [A pause, a glint.] Then I look at the pay cheque.'

Things are going so well until I ask about his other reputation, the less media-friendly one that deems him anti-evolution, anti-divorce, anti-abortion and anti-contraception. Though he is pro some issues - like the death penalty. It's an uncompromising, Catholic world-view that brands Mel Gibson as something of an extremist, as Hollywood's bonkers Republican figure. 'A wacko Republican figure,' he says, witheringly. 'Hmmn, in what way bonkers?'

'Like not believing in birth control.'

'Well, I don't.'

'Well, how can that be right? Imagine the over-population for a start.'

'Oh, really? Well, there's plenty of room, isn't there?' he replies. 'Every pair of people who get together and procreate would have to make at least four people to maintain the population of the world.'

'Says who?'

'That's a fact.'

Tell him he's being, at best, impractical and he's chuffed. 'Well... I like that!'

'What about AIDS? Women's freedom? You're supposed to be concerned with "freedom", aren't you?'

'OK,' he says, and airs his views on abortion instead, which are standard. 'Well, I see absolutely no difference between disposing of an unborn child and disposing of the guy next door.'

'But not using condoms? There isn't any person being made to be disposed of.'s

'No, but you're interfering with things you're not allowed to interfere with, as far as I'm concerned.'

Oh, dear. We've fallen out. There's a creak at the door. It's his PR man, announcing, 'We gotta wrap!' 'She's getting into birth control,' announces Mel, sticking his tongue dramatically in his cheek. 'Extreme Republican views and all this kinda stuff. So I'm being set up for another beat-up in the British tabloids. What a freak! What a weirdo! [drums fingers on table, begins playing theatrically to the gallery] Put it this way: I am in no position to judge any other single human being on this planet because I've transgressed against almost every rule that I maintain, try to maintain. So I'm a very flawed individual and I have many faults at my beck. But that doesn't mean that I should stop trying to aspire to things that I hold to be noble.'

PR: 'And on that note... I bid you adieu!'

Gibson: 'The only thing I haven't done is kill someone. But I know I want to. And who hasn't felt that?' he booms. 'Ever wanted to choke somebody out? Heh heh. That's part of the human experience, you wouldn't be human if you didn't feel that.'

'You're always killing people, aren't you? You've killed thousands of people in your films. Just as well you're an actor...'

'Yes, I can act out some of my darker fantasies on film,' he trumpets, 'See, it's my therapy. Otherwise I'd be on Death Row. That's a good quote! "Gibson would be on Death Row if not for film." Put that in!'

And he's off, bolting out the door with his publicist and one fleeting backward glance. He doesn't even bother to say goodbye. Funny little fella.

We Were Soldiers
Cert: cert15