Yes, Mel still has friends, give him a break!

Yes, Mel has made a mess of things, that's for sure... but I reckon we need to give the man a break. Some people have very very public falls from grace, and Mel has been one of those.

It's great that not all Mel's "friends" have dropped him like a hot potato. We need our friends whether things are good or bad... fair weather friends are no friends at all. Maybe it's during the times when we're at our worst that we find out who are real friends are... friends who will continue to love us despite our rotten behaviours.

Yes, Mel still has friends - People - Entertainment - smh.com.au

After a horror week in which friends have been hard to find, Mel Gibson has received support from Hollywood heavyweights.

Since shaming himself with an anti-Jewish tirade against the Los Angeles policeman who caught him drink-driving on July 28, Gibson has been relying - as ever - on his wife, Robyn, whom he has dubbed a saint.

But yesterday, two close friends - actor Jodie Foster and Jewish film producer Dean Devlin - spoke out, urging the 50-year-old's critics to understand that he is an alcoholic.

In the Los Angeles Times, Foster, who starred alongside Gibson in Maverick, said: "Is he an anti-Semite? Absolutely not. But it's no secret that he has always fought a terrible battle with alcoholism."

Foster paid tribute to Gibson for having survived an addiction that had haunted him throughout his adult life.

"[He is] a shining example of how low you can go when you are young and still pull yourself up," she said. "He took his recovery very seriously, which is why I know he is strong enough to get through this now."

Devlin - who co-produced The Patriot, in which Gibson starred - told the Los Angeles Times: "If Mel is an anti-Semite, then he spends a lot of time with us, which makes no sense.

"But he is an alcoholic, and while that makes no excuse for what he said, because there is no excuse, I believe it was the disease speaking, not the man."

Having been charged with three counts of misdemeanour drunken driving after his meltdown late last month, Gibson's career is in crisis, and his marriage is under strain. Whether Robyn can save the man who, by his own confession has been to the brink of suicide due to his war with alcoholism, remains to be seen.

Almost certainly she will not leave him. Through carousing and controversy, Robyn, 50, has stoically stood by her man.

"It evolved over a couple of years. We were friends, just a platonic association," Gibson said of meeting dental nurse Robyn Moore in an Adelaide share house in 1977 while he was in a production of Waiting For Godot.

Moore fell pregnant and the two married in June 1980. Theirs has since been regarded as one of Hollywood's most enduring marriages.

"Sometimes it almost doesn't bear analysing because it just does [work]," Gibson has said. "She certainly has a lot of wonderful qualities that I don't possess and I think I admire that. There's something true about opposites attract . . . She's 10 times more responsible [than me] . . . She's a lot more constant. I'm thankful for that. I need that."

The question is whether Robyn needs it. She has become the most isolated of Hollywood wives, seldom seen and most certainly never heard publicly. Her job is at home in the couple's lavish, ocean-front Malibu compound with most of their seven children - Hannah, Christian, Edward, William, Louis, Milo and Tom, aged between 26 and seven. She has never given an interview.

Lethal Weapon director Richard Donner once said of the pair: "Mel and Robyn are the definition of how two people can be in love. Nothing can come between them."

Source: The Sun-Herald