SANTA MONICA, Calif. — Mel Gibson took a deep breath, shook his head and stared down at his palms. "I just can't do this. You've got me at a disadvantage." The movie star, his voice a croak, was 19 minutes into an interview, but it was clear there was no way he was going to make it to 20.
"I'm coming rapidly to the conclusion that right now, today, my brain cannot function. Honestly? I'm six days off the cigarette. You're looking at someone who's having a pretty bad withdrawal from a 45-year habit."
The question that sent the jittery Gibson on his way was about the cultural riptides that await anyone who brings religion into the modern public life of Hollywood. "I'm not running away from it. I want to give you a fair trot. I like where you're coming from with these questions. I just feel ill-equipped to answer."
These are difficult days to be Mel Gibson, with or without nicotine.
On Friday, he will find out where he stands with moviegoers as a leading man with Edge of Darkness, a dark thriller that marks Gibson's first starring role since Signs in 2002. In those eight years, he has devoted himself to producing and directing, most notably the wildly successful The Passion of the Christ in 2004. He also found himself starring in a bleary mug shot in summer 2006 after a DUI arrest that would become a life-changing calamity after the anti-Semitic remarks he made while in custody were reported across the planet. Gibson apologized and called it "a moment of insanity" and a "public humiliation on a global scale" that had one positive aspect in that it led him to get help with his alcoholism.
Three days after he left the interview, Gibson, 54, looked like a new man. "I'm sorry again," he said as he reached out to shake hands. "I was in pretty rough shape. Today is better. Nine days is better than six."
Putting in time is never easy. Gibson was standing in a suite at a Santa Monica hotel, where he was enduring two long days of press interviews to promote the new movie. The place was crowded with reporters eager for their chance to get Gibson on the record about his DUI, the anti-Semitic rant and the recent juicy twists in his personal life (He is in the process of divorcing his wife of 29 years, with whom he has seven children; meanwhile, Russian musician Oksana Grigorieva, 39, gave birth to the actor's eighth child, Lucia, on Oct. 30).
"It's going OK," Gibson said gamely of his movie-star chores. "It's always a struggle. This part has always been a struggle to sort of friend-up and be that."
The whole Mad Mel persona shaped Gibson's stardom with his nut-job cop role in the four Lethal Weapon films and then the battlefield rages in the gore of Braveheart and The Patriot. The angry man is back in Edge of Darkness. Gibson portrays Thomas Craven, a Boston cop whose daughter is gunned down. "I'm the guy with nothing to lose," he snarls in the trailer for the film. "Fasten your seat belt."
This past Tuesday, Gibson, with a dozen days off the smokes, was positively chipper, and his loopy humor came through. The movie star seemed to finally let down his defenses.
Some topics remain off-limits: "The family is doing fine; everybody's healthy," he said with an expression that made it clear that was all he planned to say about his children. In a way, Gibson seems like a man from some unconstructed time, someone who lives in an age of prophecy, codes of honor and falling on your sword, even if the only reason is that you drank too much and tripped on your scabbard. "I put myself in a position where they could do it to me," he said. "It was my own fault."
Graham King, the producer of Edge of Darkness, said he initially wondered whether America really wanted to sit down with Mel Gibson in a theater with the lights out. But while filming in Boston, he watched as gawkers gathered to catch a glimpse of the star as a scene was shot in a public park. "Look, I was the producer on The Departed, and there was a crowd that came to see Jack Nicholson and Leonardo DiCaprio, but Mel drew a bigger crowd than those two together," he said.
Others in Hollywood also are optimistic that Gibson is a rehabilitated persona; Gibson already has finished making his next film, a quirky comedy called The Beaver, directed by Jodie Foster, an old friend who plays his wife in the movie.
Gibson is uncertain what to expect from the ticket-buying public: "I would hope people would be gracious and give me a chance." They might. Behaving badly is often forgiven in Hollywood. Gibson, though, is wrestling with a different challenge; he's the man who went on a bender and blamed all the wars in history on the Jews.
There's a moment in Edge of Darkness in which Gibson warns a compromised man that he needs to decide whether he wants to be the one on the cross or the one doing the nailing. Gibson smiled when asked about the line.
"Religion and politics hit nerves," Gibson said. "There's a lot of anger about a lot of things. It's not easily resolved. I guess that's what wars are about. Wars are about prejudice and fear. Hit first before you get hit. Believe me, I know."
