After graduating from the National Institute of Dramatic Art in 1977, Gibson's acting career began in Australia with appearances in the television series The Sullivans.
He made his Australian movie debut as the leather-clad post-apocalyptic survivor in George Miller's Mad Max, which later became a cult hit and launched two of its own sequels. His international profile increased through Peter Weir's anti-war First World War film Gallipoli. In 1984, he made his U.S. movie debut, starring as Fletcher Christian in The Bounty. Welsh actor Anthony Hopkins played opposite Gibson as Captain Bligh.
Gibson moved to more mainstream filmmaking with the popular Lethal Weapon series, where he starred as a maverick and violent cop, Martin Riggs, in a buddy relationship with his older and more conservative partner played by Danny Glover. Gibson surprisingly moved to the classical genre, playing the melancholy Danish prince in Franco Zeffirelli's movie of Shakespeare's Hamlet (1990). Gibson has been equally successful as a comedy actor, in movies such as Maverick (1994) and What Women Want (2000).
In 1996, Gibson received two Academy Awards (Best Director and Best Picture) for Braveheart (1995), based on the life of Sir William Wallace, a thirteenth century Scottish warlord who fought the English.
Mel Gibson recently completed The Passion of the Christ, a movie in Aramaic, Hebrew, and Latin, which recounts what Gibson describes as the last twelve hours of the life of Jesus Christ. The movie has received praise from many Christians and a number of politically conservative Jews (e.g., Michael Medved, David Horowitz, Steven Waldman).
The movie has been criticised by some liberal Christian and Jewish scholars, some of whom have claimed it may promote anti-Semitism, as it relies on passion-play images that have traditionally incited anti-Semitic incidents. The movie has been criticised by many Christian scholars for taking liberties with the New Testament storylines; a significant number of scenes and details in the movie are original ideas from an 19th century Catholic nun, Anne Catherine Emmerich, in her book "The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ."
Gibson was asked if his movie would be offensive to Jews today; his response was "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." He also stated in an interview in The New Yorker, that he trimmed a scene from The Passion of the Christ involving the Jewish high priest Caiaphas because if he did not, "they'd be coming after me at my house, they'd come to kill me."
For a further discussion, see a separate article on The Passion of Christ.
When the Carmelite nuns at the convent in Coimbra, Portugal got word out that they wanted to see a copy of the film before it was released on DVD, Gibson personally arranged for a special digital screening off of one inch tape and shipped in a projector and screens to view it and introduced the film in person. Later, he stopped by again to have a private meeting with the convent's most famous nun, Sister Lucia who was 98 and was the last survivor of the three children who saw the vision of theVirgin Mary and were said to have been given secrets by her, known as the Fatima Secrets.
Assuming that the human race is still here and that wars famine or stray asteroids have not wiped us all out or reduced humanity trying to avoid the depredations of Mel Gibson lookalikes with hunting rifles, what will rugby be like in the not too distant future? Here is one slightly eccentric vision of the future for our sport ... Published: Tue, 03 Jun 2008 12:29:26 GMT - Source: Rugbynetwork.Net - Read the article
