Mel Gibson’s long and tedious struggle with the better aspects of conscience has caused most of the industry to step back from the actor and filmmaker. The otherwise brilliant A-lister was suddenly considered radioactive enough to not be suitable enough for touching with a ten feet pole.
But, despite the unequivocal shunning of the Mad Max actor, two strong voices still resonate among the crowd, singing and hailing praises in the name of Mel Gibson, asking Hollywood to give him a second chance.
Also read: “You found someone crazier”: Mel Gibson Was Happy $526M Franchise Replaced Him With Tom Hardy
Mel Gibson’s Greatest Supporters: RDJ and Jodie Foster
Over these past two decades in Hollywood, Mel Gibson has received a manner of informal backing from two of his greatest and most vocal supporters: Robert Downey Jr. and Jodie Foster. His numerous entanglements with various socio-cultural and ethnic ideologies (plainly speaking, his anti-Semitic rants) and allegations of verbal and domestic abuse garnered quite mainstream media attention in 2006. Although, at the time, cancel culture was still a thing of the future, Gibson was canceled, and cruelly fast at that.
But despite his meteoric rise and tremendous fall, the actor helped launch the career of Robert Downey Jr. after his short prison stint at the turn of the century. The latter has ever since remained grateful to Gibson for giving him the chance to find his feet again and devote his exceptional talents to the industry that helped raise him.
Although Gibson’s relationship with Jodie Foster is not quite dramatic as his friendship with RDJ, it is still exceptional in that both have found comfort, loyalty, trust, and friendship in each other’s company – traits that hardly belong in a place like Hollywood, let alone among an array of A-listers as rarely talented as these two.
Jodie Foster Speaks Up in Defence of Mel Gibson
When Mel Gibson spoke about the Silence of the Lambs star, Jodie Foster, all he could say were terribly nice and wonderful things:
“I just love her, that’s all. You meet people like that sometimes. You just instantly fall in love, and that’s it, and it’s the purest kind of thing. We call each other up all the time and just say, ‘Hey, I love you.’”
And so when the same publication, The New York Times had a sit-down interview with Jodie Foster, the actress who has been a very vocal supporter of the Braveheart actor for a very long time said similar things in return:
“It’s not my job to adjudicate his behavior. He’s certainly not sexist and certainly not racist. I know the guy I know, somebody who’s really emotional, who I can have long, long conversations with, who’s trustworthy, who shows up for me.”
The pair struck up an unquestionable friendship on the sets of the Richard Donner film, Maverick in 1994. They have remained inseparable ever since. Foster also became the first filmmaker to offer Mel Gibson a chance to come back after his semi-retirement with her 2011 directorial feature, The Beaver.
That same year, Robert Downey Jr. also asked Gibson to walk on stage and present him the award at the 25th Annual American Cinematheque Award Ceremony. The vigorous, volatile, and impassioned speech that followed is still considered one of the most engaging monologues, enough to move an entire theater of crowd and truly believe in the power of forgiveness.
Source: The New York Times
