18 Weirdest Celebrity Trainwrecks

2. Mel Gibson Becomes Hollywood€™s Cautionary Tale

One thing that actor, writer and director Mel Gibson has in common with his most famous role, that of unstable cop Martin Riggs in the Lethal Weapon franchise, is his explosive unpredictability. In Riggs€™ case, the widower and Vietnam War veteran has PTSD and bereavement to blame€ Gibson, however, is a bipolar alcoholic. Over the years, Gibson has made horrendous and unfortunate remarks while lashed that have, respectively, revealed homophobic, anti-Semitic, misogynist and racist tendencies in his character, culminating in a barely-coherent, violently abusive message left for ex-girlfriend Oksana Grigorieva and leaked to the media Screenwriter Joe Eszterhas, who worked with Gibson briefly, later wrote a book in which he documented Gibson€™s astonishing, weird-ass alcohol fuelled rants, and claimed to be afraid for his life. Of course, Eszterhas has form for inventing interviews out of whole cloth back when he was a reporter in the 1970s, and Showgirls and Basic Instinct show the kind of half-assed films the man used to write€ still, the overall picture is a damning one, describing a dangerous, out-of-control and unreconstructed mess of a man. Although some claim that the incidents reported in the media in the last few years have killed his career as a leading man, it€™s worthwhile pointing out that Gibson had stepped away from acting a few years before his meltdown to concentrate on writing and directing. From all reports he€™s back on track again, and back in control of himself, and even discounting the astonishingly massive divorce settlement made to his ex-wife in 2011, he€™s made enough money that he never needs to work again. Nonetheless, Gibson is now the number one cautionary tale in all of Hollywood: a walking example of what can happen to your reputation and bankability if you lose it in public in such a wildly offensive and indefensible manner.