Mel Gibson: Bad Actor

Once upon a time, Mel Gibson delivered great performances in terrific films like "Gallipoli" (I cried like a baby at that one), "Road Warrior," and "The Year Of Living Dangerously." But he came to America and started to over-emote and hasn't starred or directed in a decent film since "Braveheart" (which I'm not a big fan of) or maybe "Signs." Certainly his last real acting triumph was "The Bounty" or "Dangerously." Nonetheless, I'm surprised he wasn't able to at least ACT contrite and comfortable in his own skin during the Diane Swayer interview. He twitched and gestured and seemed extremely ill-at-ease and unconvincing the entire time. And I love the fact that he said his anti-Semitic outburst when drunk was a reaction to how poorly the Jews treated him when he made his anti-Semitic film "The Passion Of The Christ." See, it's the Jews' fault! And like all bigots, he is incapable of showing any awareness: when Reader's Digest bent over backwards to let Gibson distance himself from his dad's wacky "there was no Holocaust" theories, Gibson used the usual Holocaust denier strategy of saying a lot of other people died to. (Yes, but not nearly as many and none of them were targeted for extinction.) Similarly, when Diane Sawyer asked if Jews were responsible for the wars in the Middle East, all Gibson could bring himself to say was that they're not blameless. Any doubts he's a raging Jew-hater (and gay basher as well) are erased when seeing how even when he desperately needs to present himself as reasonable Gibson fails completely.