![\"Mel](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Mel-Gibson-On-The-Line-2022-Far-Out-Magazine-F-1140x855.jpg\")
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(Credits: Far Out \/ Saban Films)<\/p>\n
Thu 20 November 2025 16:15, UK <\/p>\n
If there\u2019s one thing that Mel Gibson<\/a> fears more than facing up to the consequences of his own actions, it\u2019s the devil, and he thought he\u2019d stumbled upon Satan himself when he worked with an actor he found to be almost supernaturally precocious.<\/p>\n Since slamming his fist on the self-destruct button two decades ago, the two-time Academy Award winner hasn\u2019t managed to squeeze his way back into Hollywood\u2019s good graces. He came pretty close with Hacksaw Ridge, but then it was back to the straight-to-video bargain bin. Forevermore, potentially.<\/p>\n If there was one way for Gibson to ease his way back into the mainstream, it was as a filmmaker, since his face being plastered on the big screen remains a difficult sell. Helming terrible Mark Wahlberg thrillers and Passion of the Christ sequels isn\u2019t going to do it, but that\u2019s apparently how he wants to spend his directorial career.<\/p>\n Despite plenty of evidence to the contrary<\/a>, the sunken A-lister is adamant that he\u2019s \u201cnever discriminated against anyone or done anything that sort of supports that reputation.\u201d Even if that was true, and there\u2019s no shortage of people inside and outside of the industry who\u2019d disagree, supporting nutty conspiracy theories and seeing the devil everywhere aren\u2019t personality traits associated with A-listers.<\/p>\n When most folks see Christopher Walken, they think, \u2018There\u2019s Christopher Walken, the respected and eccentric actor\u2019. When Mel Gibson saw Christopher Walken, he was convinced that he was standing in the presence of the Antichrist<\/a>, because that\u2019s how he opted to connect those particular dots.<\/p>\n Back in the early 1990s, when he was making his feature-length directorial debut on The Man Without a Face, he enlisted a young Nick Stahl to play Chuck Norstadt, a kid who wants to follow in his father\u2019s footsteps by joining an esteemed military academy, where he gains a mentor in Gibson\u2019s Justin McLeod, the titular faceless man.<\/p>\n It was the 12-year-old\u2019s first appearance in a movie, and he won widespread acclaim for his performance. Almost too much acclaim for Gibson\u2019s liking, after he revealed that he was convinced something sinister may have been afoot. \u201cHe\u2019s really strong; this kid was diabolically good for his age,\u201d he told Sandi David<\/a>. \u201cI kept looking for the 666 on the top of his head.\u201d<\/p>\n Presumably, he didn\u2019t find it, otherwise he\u2019d have shit a brick and shut down the entire production. Since the dawn of the moving image, the industry has produced a steady pipeline of child actors who belie their tender years with towering performances, from Shirley Temple and Judy Garland to Macaulay Culkin and Leonardo DiCaprio. That\u2019s how the business works, and the devil hasn\u2019t got anything to do with it.<\/p>\n This being Gibson, though, his first thought was that an agent of Satan was standing in his midst, sent to the mortal plane to corrupt him by\u2026 giving a solid acting performance in a film that he directed. The man\u2019s said some crazy things over the years<\/a>, and growing suspicious of Stahl\u2019s preternatural talents as a thespian may not even crack the upper echelons.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Related Topics<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Credits: Far Out \/ Saban Films) Thu 20 November 2025 16:15, UK If there\u2019s one thing that Mel…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":296278,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[49,48,361,75,96311],"class_list":{"0":"post-296277","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-celebrities","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-mel-gibson"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296277","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=296277"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296277\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/296278"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=296277"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=296277"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=296277"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}