At the age of 12, Mel Gibson, his parents, and his 11 siblings moved to his mother's native Australia, where his father could recover from an on-the-job injury and Mel's older brothers could avoid the draft for the Vietnam War. It was in Australia that Mel had his first jobs: a supermarket clerk, a worker at Kentucky Fried Chicken, and an assistant juice mixer. When he graduated from a Catholic high school, his sister sent his picture and application to the National Institute of Dramatic Arts in Sydney, and he enrolled. During school, he found the time to appear in a movie called Summer City (he played a surfer named Scallop). After graduating, he won the role of a retarded handyman in the 1979 movie Tim, for which he won the Best Actor Award from the Australian Film Institute, and joined the State Theatre Company of South Australia with novice director George Miller. The night before his audition for the title role in Miller's 1980 hit Mad Max, Gibson's face got busted in a barroom brawl, but Miller ended up casting him anyway.

Mad Max proved to be the springboard from which Gibson would fly to great theatrical heights. After starring in its enormously successful sequel, 1982's Road Warrior, he had leading roles in blockbusters like Lethal Weapon and Braveheart. Today, the first recipient of People magazine's "Sexiest Man Alive" award (in 1985) lives with his wife and six children on a quiet ranch in Australia, far removed from the hustle and bustle of the Hollywood world.