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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, his now well on his way to becoming a real Hollywood star.
Mel Gibson
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 Mad Max sequel, The Road Warrior/Mad 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.
Directing
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 a status of 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 Gibson – Braveheart
Mel needed someone who could teach him the dialect, and the perfect man was Sean Connery. Not only was he an actual Scotsman, 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 indeed a success. Braveheart became a mega-hit with both critics and audiences, winning a total of five Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director. It has also been criticized for not being especially accurate regarding the real history, but nonetheless, Braveheart was a magnificent film, even garnering comparisons to masterpieces such as Spartacus and Lawrence of Arabia.
Academy Award-winning actor
Mel Gibson continued to star in and produce several movies. In 2017, he was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Achievement in Directing for Hacksaw Ridge, a World War II film about the Battle of Okinawa.
Not only was it a great movie, but Mel Gibson actually got to work together with his son, Milo Gibson, who had a supporting role in the film.
Milo is one of Mel Gibson’s nine children, and as you might know by now, he’s enjoying a career in the film business. But it wasn’t always like that, since Milo originally wanted to do something completely different to his father.
One thing is for sure. He looks exactly like his father!
One might think that as the son of Mel Gibson, you’d live in all the glamour present in a huge Hollywood mansion. But according to one of his sons, that wasn’t the case.