The movie that sent Mel Gibson into Hollywood exile: “I just felt I was a bit stale”
If you were to ask most people why Mel Gibson upped and vanished from Hollywood in the early 2000s, the majority would respond by saying, ‘Because he was arrested and caught on camera going on an antisemitic tirade towards a police officer’. Do you know who wouldn’t say that? Mel Gibson.
Not to split hairs when he did a terrible thing, but he’d already been absent for a few years by then anyway. In his 1980s and 1990s pomp, the two-time Academy Award-winning filmmaker and A-list movie star was one of the biggest and most bankable names in the business, and then it all went tits up.
That one moment derailed his entire career, and he’s never recovered. He’s a million miles away from where he used to be, and based on how things have been going since he mounted his bargain basement comeback, there are still so many miles to go on the road to redemption and mainstream reacceptance that it would make The Proclaimers’ heads explode like that scene in Scanners.
And yet, Gibson would disagree that his DUI charge was solely to blame. In what was a decidedly first-world problem, he instead theorised that he was getting a little bored with how things were going. Question it all you want, especially when the film that convinced him to head into Hollywood exile was also the highest-grossing of his entire career.
“I walked away from acting after Signs because I just felt I was a bit stale,” he told George Lang. “It wasn’t ringing any bells, so I focused on directing, writing, producing, and all that kind of stuff.” During his sabbatical, he wasn’t sitting around twiddling his thumbs, and he made himself an absolute fortune.
During his onscreen sabbatical, the deposed Mad Max produced the little-seen thriller Paparazzi and Robert Downey Jr’s comeback vehicle The Singing Detective. He also self-funded The Passion of the Christ, which became the top-earning independent movie of all time, netting its director a pretty penny.
After that, he hit the self-destruct button, and eight years would pass before he returned in Martin Campbell’s Edge of Darkness. “It was time to come back,” he explained. “I got the bug back again because I felt like, all of a sudden, maybe after all these years, I might have something to offer again, and it coincided with a very good piece of material. It was a compelling story with good elements attached, and I dug it.”
Since the hard-boiled crime thriller bombed at the box office, it was clear that audiences hadn’t forgiven Gibson for his transgressions. He hasn’t had a hit film since, and even theatrical releases are becoming fewer and further between, with the former superstar now running the gamut of straight-to-streaming genre films.
It goes without saying that he didn’t recede from the industry spotlight exclusively because he was knackered and fed up after shooting Signs. As much as it would have driven his decision on a personal level, it’s stating the obvious to say there were other factors in play.
