But his contradictions smack more of jumbled sincerity than bald hypocrisy. And once you get him going on a subject he truly cares about, you sense deep rumblings beneath the Everyman image. Take his thoughts on Hamlet, a role he played on film in 1990 and a play he had hoped to direct on the Los Angeles stage with Robert Downey Jr. in the title part. The answer doesn't always come, but the process is in the asking and the wonder and the mystery. If there's no mystery, you might as well go out and hang yourself.
Family man Sounds dangerously close to intellectualism.
And when the subject turns to family, the one thing Mr. Gibson holds closest to his heart, he gets downright philosophical about shuffling off this mortal coil. There are a lot of people depending on me, and there might be only 30 years left. You start thinking about your mortality and wondering what it's all about. You start that process in your early 30s, and it's something you become accustomed to. Stardom is one thing he still hasn't grown accustomed to, although he certainly hasn't backed away from movie star roles.