Mel Gibson has been a mainstay in show business for several decades. The Hollywood star also has nine children, one of whom, Milo Gibson, is now starting his very own movie career.
Milo Gibson’s been in several films, even working together with his father on occasion. And, at 32 years of age, he is the spitting image of his Hollywood icon father.
Few actors have played such iconic roles as Mel Gibson. Braveheart (1995) and Conspiracy Theory (1997) are two of his most beloved roles, but the fact is that Mel Gibson has done so much more.
During the years he’s spent in the spotlight, Mel’s had a wife – whom he divorced – and, since 2014, a new partner. Somehow, while being an action-packed star, traveling the world to shoot films as an actor, director, and producer, Gibson has found the time to raise nine wonderful kids.
Some of them have chosen a life outside the public eye, while some wanted a career in film. One of them, Mel’s son Milo Gibson, is now well on his way to becoming a real Hollywood star.
And he looks just like his old man!
Mel Gibson was born in New York in January of 1956. When he was 12 years old, his father won a “small fortune” on Jeopardy!, and decided that his family should move to Australia.
They settled in New South Wales, and following his graduation from high school, Mel Gibson went into the world of acting. His sister enrolled him – without his knowledge – in the Sidney National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA). He decided to go, and it didn’t take long before he became a fully-fledged actor.
In 1977, Mel landed his first role in the film Summer City. A filmmaker named George Miller took note of him, and that changed everything. Gibson was then cast in Miller’s first low-budget futuristic thriller Mad Max (1979), and soon he became a star in Europe and Australia through the success of the movie.
Gibson went on to star in several other films and win the Australian Film Institute’s Best Actor Award. By 1981, he had taken a huge leap into the world of Hollywood.
Mel Gibson starred in the Max Max sequel The Road Warrior/Max Max 2 in 1981 and the US audience was sold. Mel found himself placed in the same category as action stars such as Clint Eastwood and Arnold Schwarzenegger, though he could do so much more than just action movies.
Firstly, his astounding interpretation of Hamlet in 1990 showed everyone that he could take on softer roles as well. Three years later he made his debut as a director with The Man Without a Face. But, in 1996, Mel Gibson reached Hollywood stardom and achieved status on a whole different level.
When Mel Gibson was handed the script for Braveheart, he knew almost instantly that he wanted the project, and not only in an acting capacity.
“It is just a funny corner of history that I’d never heard of before. And the script was a very haunting piece of work,” he said.
“I put it down and thought, ‘it’ a pretty good script’. And then I couldn’t stop thinking about it, it obviously got inside my head. It was given to me on an acting basis, but I just felt I had to tell this story, I repeated scenes and sequences inside of my head. So that’s a pretty good indication that you probably should direct it.”
Mel Gibson, whose own mother is Irish, didn’t know the dialect at all.
“It was difficult, but I was up there and immersed among people who all needed subtitles,” he said on the Graham Norton Show. “I’d ask people ‘What did you say?’ and they’d have to repeat it, so eventually it kind of worked its way into my lexicon.”
Mel needed someone who could teach him the dialect, and the perfect man was Sean Connery. Not only was he an actual Scotsman, but he had also played roles such as James Bond and the King of England, all with his great and super charming Edinburgh dialect.
“We were at Andy Vajna’s place and he’s Hungarian, so he made Goulash. Now, imagine Sean Connery saying that word,” Gibson explained. “To hear Sean actually utter a word like ‘goulash’ is a lesson in itself. You just pick up the accent from the people you’re talking to and hearing and he helped me perfect my Scottish accent.”
Well, Mel Gibson’s undertaking of the film was a success indeed. Braveheart became a mega-hit both with critics and the audience, winning a total of five Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Director. It has also been criticized for not being especially accurate in regards to the real history, but nonetheless, Braveheart was a magnificent film, even garnering comparisons to masterpieces such as Spartacus and Lawrence of Arabia.
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