Ranked #12 in Empire (UK) magazine's "The Top 100 Movie Stars of All Time" list. [October 1997]
Born at 4:45pm-EST.
Chosen by People (USA) magazine as one of the "50 Most Beautiful People" in the world. [1996]
Educated at University of New South Wales, Australia.
Attended drama school with Judy Davis. They played Romeo and Juliet together.
Chosen by People magazine as one of the "50 Most Beautiful People" in the world. [1991]
Chosen by People magazine as one of the "50 Most Beautiful People" in the world. [1990]
Trained at NIDA (National Institute of Dramatic Arts). As well as Judy Davis, other fellow students, during his time there, included Colin Friels and Dennis Olsen.
Awarded the AO (Officer of the Order of Australia), Australia's highest honor, in mid-1997.
Roommates with Geoffrey Rush in college.
He took up acting only because his sister submitted an application behind his back. The night before an audition, he got into a fight, and his face was badly beaten, an accident that won him the role.
Brother of actor, Donal Gibson.
Chosen by Empire magazine as one of the "100 Sexiest Stars" in film history (#37). [1995]
Chosen as People Magazine's first "Sexiest Man Alive." [1985]
Is a big fan of The Three Stooges.
First studied drama at the New Zealand Drama School, Toi Whakaari in Wellington, New Zealand. After getting accepted he completed the course and used this as a foot-in into NIDA in Australia in 1975.
He and his wife met through a dating service.
Has a horseshoe kidney (two kidneys fused into one).
Abstains from alcohol completely.
Owns a production company with branches in the USA, Australia and the UK.
Ranked #15 in Premiere's 2003 annual "Power 100" list. Had ranked #17 in 2002.
His voice in Mad Max (1979) was dubbed for the film's US release.
The doctor who delivered him into the world was Charles Sweet, grandfather of actor Jay Danger.
He was a part of the movment dubbed the "Australian New Wave" by the press. They were a group of filmmakers and performers who emerged from Down Under at about the same time in the early 1980's and found work in other parts of the world. Other members included actress Judy Davis and directors George Miller, Gillian Armstrong and Peter Weir.
He was the first Australian actor to be paid $1,000,000 for a film role.
Almost turned down the role of William Wallace in Braveheart (1995) because he thought he was too old for the role. He asked the producers if he could direct it instead. A compromise was made, he could direct the movie if he agreed to portray Wallace.
Shares birthday with J.R.R. Tolkien.
His father, Hutton Gibson, moved the family from upstate New York to Sydney, New South Wales, Australia in 1968 after winning as a contestant on "Jeopardy!" (1964).
For The Passion of the Christ (2004), which he directed, wrote and produced, he spent 25 million dollars of his own money. Back in 1992, he started doing research for the movie that was not released until 2004.
Has 7 children: daughter, Hannah Gibson (born 1980); twin sons, Edward Gibson and Christian Gibson (born 1982); son, Willie Gibson (born 1985); son, Louis Gibson (born 1988); son, Milo Gibson (born 1990); son, Tommy Gibson (born 1999).
Son, Christian Gibson, is a freshman at the University of Colorado at Boulder. [Fall 2001]
Was considered for the role of James Bond in GoldenEye (1995).
Ranked #10 in Premiere's 2004 annual "Power 100" list. Had ranked #15 in 2003. He is the highest-ranked actor on the 2004 list.
Has his own private chapel in his grounds, where he attends mass every day.
He was voted the 48th "Greatest Movie Star" of all time by Entertainment Weekly.
Ranked number 1 on Forbes 2004 "Celebrity 100 List". He was the highest paid celebrity in 2004 with a reported $210,000,000 salary from his The Passion of the Christ (2004) profits, plus a potential $150,000,000 that is yet to be accounted for. He made more money than Oprah Winfrey ($210,000,000), J.K. Rowling ($147,000,000), Tiger Woods & Michael Schumacher ($80,000,000 each) and Steven Spielberg ($75,000,000) in 2004.
In Portuguese, his name means "honey."
Was considered for the role of Batman/Bruce Wayne in Batman (1989).
Was considered for the role of Wolverine in X-Men (2000).
Son of the controversial Hutton Gibson and Anne Gibson.
In the movie Forever Young (1992), he needed to appear older in the last few scenes. Because his eyes were so bright blue, no matter how many wrinkles they put on him, he did not look authentically older. So, he had to wear gray contacts, in order to look old.
Along with Warren Beatty, Clint Eastwood, Robert Redford, Richard Attenborough and Kevin Costner one of 6 people to win and Academy Award for "Best Director", though they are mainly known as actors.
Was awarded an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree from Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles in May 2003, and gave the commencement address.
Ranked #15 on Premiere's 2005 Power 50 List. Had ranked #10 in 2004.
His favourite films include, The Big Country (1958), Double Indemnity (1944), and Spartacus (1960)
His family line goes back several generations in Australia, but his ancestors originally came from Ireland and Scotland.
Was offered the role of Eliot Ness in The Untouchables (1987), but had to decline because he was already working on one of the Lethal Weapon films.
He turned down the role of Harvey Dent/Two Face in Batman Forever (1995), due to scheduling conflicts with Braveheart (1995).
Owns a summer home in Branford, Connecticut.
When Apocalypto (2006) is finished, he plans to donate six replicas of Mayan pyramids and several movie-set villages.
Flew to Fiji in early December 2004 where he bought the 2,160 hectare island of Mago from a Japanese hotel chain for $15 million. He plans to turn the Pacific paradise, that is home to forty residents, mostly coconut farmers and their families, into his own personal retreat. The South Pacific island boasts two lagoons and stunning white-sand beaches.
Gibson has been widely perceived as a conservative Republican, even though he has never identified himself as such. In March 2004 he expressed doubts over the Iraq war, in particular the failure to find weapons of mass destruction, although he maintained that President George W. Bush had "done a lot of good" elsewhere. At the People's Choice Awards ceremony in January 2005, Gibson again condemned the Iraq war and praised the liberal director Michael Moore and his documentary film Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004). Many of Gibson's positions are in accordance with traditional Catholicism. He released a statement in March 2005 condemning the euthanasia of Terry Schiavo, and has criticized stem cell research. He is also a proponent of the death penalty, which many conservative Catholics support but which the Roman Catholic Church opposes.
He was the original choice to play Jack Stanton in Primary Colors (1998) but lost out to John Travolta.
He was named after the Church of St. Mel in Clonmel, Co. Tipperary, Ireland where his mother's family is from.
Was spoofed in both "South Park" (1997) and "Family Guy" (1999), and both of the times he was spoofed, there was a reference to the Looney Tunes cartoons. In the "South Park" (1997) episode "The Passion of the Jew", his character acts a lot like Daffy Duck in the cartoon _Yankee Doodle Daffy (1943)_, while scaring Stan and Kenny, in the hopes that they will both torture him. And in the "Family Guy" (1999) episode "North by North Quahog", he chases Peter and Lois Griffin to the top of Mount Everest and is tricked into walking off a ledge, to which he plummets to the ground, very much like Wile E. Coyote does in several cartoons.
Gibson has an estimated fortune of $850 million, according to the "Los Angeles Business Journal". The size of his fortune him the 47th richest person in the Los Angeles area and the wealthiest actor in the world.
His performance as "Mad" Max Rockatansky in the "Mad Max" trilogy is ranked #78 on Premiere Magazine's 100 Greatest Movie Characters of All Time.
"Braveheart" (1995) is ranked #62 on the American Film Institute's 100 Most Inspiring Movies of All Time.
Ranked #17 on Premiere's 2006 "Power 50" list. Had ranked #15 in 2005.
Turned down the role of Sgt. John McLoughlin in World Trade Center (2006) to direct Apocalypto (2006) instead.
"That's the way you should do it. Take a garbage role for the money, like Lethal Weapon 4, and then do what you want to do. He's a cool fella." - Peter Stormare
"I like directing much better. It's more fun, that's all there is to it. It's essentially the same job, which is storytelling, but you have more control over the way you want to tell the story. It's a high. I love it."
'My fears: everything from being afraid that I'm going to run out of cream for my cornflakes right up to someone chopping my privates off.'
On his involvement in Braveheart (1995) as actor, director and producer: "If you're going to wear three hats, you'd better grow two more heads."
"There is no salvation for those outside the Church...I believe it. Put it this way. My wife is a saint. She's a much better person than I am. Honestly. She's like, Episcopalian, Church of England. She prays, she believes in God, she knows Jesus, she believes in that stuff. And it's just not fair if she doesn't make it, she's better than I am. But that is a pronouncement from the chair. I go with it."
On his religious beliefs: "I'm not a done deal. I'm a work in progress. I'm still extremely flawed."
"You can't live up to what people expect. Nobody can. But I guess that's my problem, not theirs."
About the Passion of the Christ "This movie is about Faith, Hope, Love and Forgivness. Themes that are as important now as they were in Jesus' time."
"I wasn't exactly the most zealous keeper-of-the-flame, you know? I was a pretty wild boy quite frankly. Even now when I'm trying more than I was before, I still fail every day at some level, but that's being human."
"I'd like to be able to wake up early every morning, but I don't. I'd like to quit smoking. I'd like to never lose my temper. The list goes on and on. I'd even like to get dressed by myself, and not have other people watching me."
"I did a lot of crazy things so I'm surprised to be alive."
On human embryonic stem cell research: "I found that the cloning of human embryos will be used in the process and that, for me, I have an ethical problem with that. Why do I, as a taxpayer, have to fund something I believe is unethical?"
"The fear mongering we depict in this film reminds me a little of President Bush and his guys." [On Apocalypto (2006)]
"I feel a strange kinship with Michael [Moore]. They're trying to pit us against each other in the press, but it's a hologram. They really have got nothing to do with one another. It's just some kind of device, some left-right. He makes some salient points. There was some very expert, elliptical editing going on. However, what the hell are we doing in Iraq? No one can explain to me in a reasonable manner that I can accept why we're there, why we went there, and why we're still there."
On his decision to cut a scene in which Caiaphas says "his blood be on us and on our children" soon Pontius Pilate washes his hands of Jesus: "I wanted it in. My brother said I was wimping out if I didn't include it. But, man, if I included that in there, they'd be coming after me at my house. They'd come to kill me."
Asked whether The Passion of the Christ (2004) would be offensive to Jews today: "It's not meant to. I think it's meant to just tell the truth. I want to be as truthful as possible. But when you look at the reasons Christ came, he was crucified - he died for all mankind and he suffered for all mankind. So that, really, anyone who transgresses has to look at their own part or look at their own culpability."
"Vatican II corrupted the institution of the church. Look at the main fruits: dwindling numbers and pedophilia." - Time, January 27, 2003
"I might go and go somewhere no-one can find me. You know where that is? You know where the place is no-one can find you? I was thinking of pitching my tent right next to the weapons of mass destruction. Then no-one would find me."
"I got to a very desperate place. Very desperate. Kind of jump-out-of-a-window kind of desperate. And I didn't want to hang around here, but I didn't want to check out. The other side was kind of scary. And I don't like heights, anyway. But when you get to that point where you don't want to live, and you don't want to die, it's a desperate, horrible place to be. And I just hit my knees. And I had to use The Passion of the Christ (2004) to heal my wounds."
Asked whether his opposition to abortion and support for capital punishment makes him feel isolated in Hollywood: "Some kind of a dinosaur? No, you know you have to have these opinions about these things. I'm pretty firm on stuff like that. I don't feel like I'm howling in a hurricane. I just try to do my bit the way I think it should be done."
"I probably sound like some egotist, you know, saying that the Roman Church is wrong, but I believe it is at the moment, since Vatican II." (1990)
"Opposition to The Passion of the Christ (2004) kind of put me back on my heels a little bit ... I expected some level of turbulence because when one delves into religion and politics - people's deeply held beliefs -- you're going to stir things up ... But it was a surprise to have shots being fired over the bow while I was still filming, and then to have various loud voices in the press - people who hadn't seen the work - really slinging mud."
Asked if he felt besieged by the opposition to The Passion of the Christ (2004): "Beseiged? No, not really. They're pretty pathetic actually. I sort of look at them now and feel sorry for them. They've given their best shot, they kind of came out with this mantra again and again and again, 'He's an anti-Semite, he's an anti-Semite, he's an anti-Semite, he's an anti-Semite.' I'm not. But they like to say that in newspapers. So it's kind of how those, anything repeated often enough slowly amalgamates into some sort of accepted truth."
"My dad taught me my faith, and I believe what he taught me. The man never lied to me in his life."
"Obviously, nobody wants to touch something filmed in two dead languages. They think I'm crazy, and maybe I am. But maybe I'm a genius."
"There's something to do with the Federal Reserve that Lincoln did, Kennedy did and Reagan tried. I can't remember what it was. My dad told me about it. Everyone who did this particular thing that would have fixed the economy got undone. Anyway, I'll end up dead if I keep talking."
"My biggest weakness is that I'm excessive. Fortunately for everyone concerned, I'm not as excessive as I used to be."
"I think the Lethal Weapon movies contain my favorite performances. It sounds really crummy, I know, but although the work doesn't look hard, it's difficult to create effortless on screen."
"What worries me is that people will take this as fact. I'm not angry, per se, that it refutes everything I hold sacred, the foundations of my beliefs. The Da Vinci Code (2006) is an admitted work of fiction but it cleverly weaves fact into maverick theories in a way that will appear plausible to some."
"To be certain, neither I nor my film is anti-Semitic. The Passion is a movie meant to inspire, not offend. My intention in bringing it to the screen is to create a lasting work of art and engender serious thought among audiences of diverse faith backgrounds, or none, who have varying familiarity with this story. If the intense scrutiny during my twenty-five years in public life revealed I had ever persecuted or discriminated against anyone based on race or creed, I would be all too willing to make amends. But there is no such record. Nor do I hate anybody - certainly not the Jews ... They are my friends and associates, both in my work and social life. Thankfully, treasured friendships forged over decades are not easily shaken by nasty innuendo. Anti-Semitism is not only contrary to my personal beliefs, it is also contrary to the core message of my movie ... For those concerned about the content of this film, know that it conforms to the narratives of Christ's passion and death found in the four Gospels of the New Testament ... This is a movie about faith, hope, love and forgiveness - something sorely needed in these turbulent times."
"I'm not a preacher, and I'm not a pastor. But I really feel my career was leading me to make The Passion of the Christ (2004). The Holy Ghost was working through me on this film, and I was just directing traffic. I hope the film has the power to evangelize."
