Mel Gibson
- Born: 3 Jan, 1956
Though introduced to American audiences as Australian, the strikingly handsome, blue-eyed Mel Gibson actually hailed from Peekskill, New York. (He and his family had emigrated Down Under in 1968 at the height of the Vietnam War.) After a season onstage with Sydney's South Australian Theatre Company where he portrayed both Oedipus and Henry IV, he made his name as the leather-clad, post-apocalyptic action hero of George Miller's "Mad Max" and in the radically different "Tim" (both 1979), for which he picked up his first of two Australian Film Institute Awards as Best Actor, playing a retarded handyman in love with Piper Laurie. Peter Weir's World War I drama "Gallipoli" and "Mad Max 2" (both 1981), Miller's transcendent follow-up to "Mad Max"...
FAMILY & COMPANIONS
- father Hutton Gibson: born c. 1918; leading figure in a conservative Catholic splinter group, The Alliance for Catholic Traditions; won $21,000 on the Art Fleming-hosted "Jeopardy" in 1968 while waiting out a workman's compensation suit after falling from a train and injuring his back; moved family to Australia soon after, partly because he didn't want his sons drafted into Vietnam War
- mother Ann Gibson: born c. 1921 in Longford, Ireland; died in December 1990
- siblings : Gibson was the sixth of 11 children (five boys and five girls born in the USA; parents adopted 11th child in Australia); according to USA Weekend (February 5-7, 1999), "One brother is a business executive in art supplies, another is a money broker, another is in the process of patenting various inventions, and his sisters 'are mostly mothers'"
- brother Donal Gibson: born c. 1958
- daughter Hannah Gibson: born c. 1980; mother, Robyn Gibson
- son Thomas Gibson: born on April 14, 1999; mother, Robyn Gibson
- son Edward Gibson: twin of Christian; born c. 1982; mother, Robyn Gibson
- son Christian Gibson: twin of Edward; born c. 1982; mother, Robyn Gibson
- son William Gibson: born c. 1984; mother, Robyn Gibson
- son Louis Gibson: born c 1987; mother, Robyn Gibson
- son Milo Gibson: born c. 1990; mother, Robyn Gibson; father has nicknamed him 'Jarhead'
- wife Robyn Gibson: met in Adelaide, Australia in 1977; married in 1980; have seven children together
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