Mel Gibson

Mel Gibson was born on the 3rd of January, 1956. He was originally born in Peekskill, New York but his family moved to Australia when he was just 12 years old. He was the middle child in a huge family of 11 children. His mother Anne Patricia Reilly was born in Co Longford. His full name is Mel Colm-Cille Gerard Gibson; Saint Mel, fifth-century Irish saint, and Colm-Cille, is after another Irish saint. He has dual Irish and American citizenship. He’s a Catholic and has a chapel in his house where he goes to mass every day.

Gibson met Robyn Denise Moore in the late 1970s on an Australian dating website. She was a dental nurse. In June 1980, they married in a church in New South Wales. They have one daughter, six sons, and two grandchildren. They separated in August 2006 after 26 years of marriage. Robyn filed for divorce in April of last year. In October of that same year his new partner Oksana Grigorieva, a Russian pianist gave birth to his daughter. It is thought she was the reason for their divorce. They soon split. Grigorieva imposed a restraining order to stop him seeing her or their daughter Lucia after an apparent domestic violence incident.

Gibson is a keen property investor with various properties in Malibu, California, Costa Rica and Australia. He even owns his own private island in Fiji. He has a production company called Icon International, which has offices in the USA, Australia and the UK.

For The Passion of the Christ that was released in 2004 that he directed, wrote and produced, he spent 25 million dollars of his own money. He started working on it 12 years before it was released. The film made $210 million. He won an Academy Award and a Golden Globe for Best Director as well as several Australian awards.

In 2006 he was arrested for drunk driving when he made insulting comments about women and Jews. He did a 3 year probation. He then checked himself into rehab for alcohol abuse.

He has starred in:

Lethal Weapon (1987),

Hamlet (1990),

Brave heart (1995),

Signs (2002).