Interview: Mel Gibson

On the 15th anniversay of the release of his Scottish epic Braveheart, actor and director Mel Gibson reveals why he thinks his highly fictionalised tale of William Wallace resonates with more than just Scots

IN THE basement screening room of a New York hotel, a small group of international journalists – Scots, Russians, Japanese, Germans and Australians – is waiting for Mel Gibson to arrive. We've just watched Braveheart (a Blu-ray version will be released on 2 November, exactly 15 years after the original), witnessing Gibson's William Wallace slashing and burning his way through English subjugation and straight into the heart of Scotland's iconography.

In the decade and a half since Gibson's multiple-Oscar-winning, historian-baiting epic was released, the actor's career has weathered its fair share of ups and downs, but the Braveheart effect has grown only stronger, the blue face paint seeping into our national consciousness for better or worse and being credited for everything from our political status to our cultural confidence – as well as our fondness for romanticising the past. What will the man himself have to say?

When Gibson walks in, free from the usual Hollywood entourage, there is a hush. That's what journalists do when movie stars float from their starry heights and enter a more pedestrian orbit. And the bigger the star, the quieter the hush. For Gibson, it's so quiet I suspect a few people might be holding their breath.

At 53, Gibson looks dishevelled in a casually expensive, bohemian way. Greying hair ruffled from the hat he has been wearing, he's sporting a black waxed jacket on top of a crumpled chambray shirt and waistcoat, his patterned silk scarf and hat are placed on his knee when he sits down. A blushing journalist in the front row mentions something about Indiana Jones, and Gibson looks a bit embarrassed.

"What, this?" he says, tugging at his clothes."I left my house for a photo shoot so I knew they'd have clothes for me and I wouldn't be depending on these. It ended up that they gave me this." He pulls the waistcoat from under the jacket. "They told me to bring a hat so I brought a hat." He lets out a short laugh and shifts in his seat.

For a billionaire movie star and Academy Award-winning filmmaker, Gibson is surprisingly ill at ease. He fidgets and taps his feet, pulls his ears and runs his hands through his hair. He doesn't have a cigarette, even movie stars aren't allowed to do that, but it's as plain as the twinkle in his blue eyes and the laugh that rattles his chest, he'd love one. Asked what has changed about him in the years since Braveheart was released, he says "Fifteen percent more tar in my tubercles," before rattling out another laugh.

Perhaps he's nervy because of the kicking he has had at the hands of the press, started by a well-reported and outrageous anti-Semitic outburst in 2006, for which he publicly apologised. The tirade, aimed at a police officer who had pulled him over for erratic driving, was tequila-fuelled. Gibson had lapsed back into the alcoholism that has dogged him throughout his life. The scandal nearly put an end to his Hollywood career and fuelled the anger of those who object to Gibson's ideological filmmaking.

It could also be that he's nervous that rather than the focus being on Braveheart, he's going to be grilled about his split from his wife of 26 years and his new relationship with Oksana Grigorieva, who is pregnant with their first – his eighth – child. Whatever the reason, Gibson looks like a man who might prefer to run on to a battlefield, claymore in hand, than face the assembled crowd.

If Gibson seems vulnerable in person, behind the camera he couldn't be more different. As a director, he specialises in a kind of hyperbolic, super-confident rendering of history. His broad strokes might rankle with people who'd prefer Hollywood to offer at least a nod in the direction of historical accuracy, but if box office figures are a guide for the average cinema-goer his films are as irresistible and moreish as a bucket of popcorn. From the American War of Independence (The Patriot, 2000), to Christ's final hours (The Passion of the Christ, 2004) and the end of the Mayan civilisation (Apocalypto, 2006), each movie has racked up millions of dollars in ticket sales while in its own way provoking outrage, from taking liberties with historical fact to accusations of subtexts including homophobia and anti-English prejudice.

What is agreed is that Gibson's cinematic style all began with the blood-spattered battlefields of Braveheart. The film was seminal for the director, and hardly less significant for Scotland. For Gibson, it was the first illustration that epic, historical storytelling can still pack an emotional punch. For Scotland, it presented a fictionalised version of history that for many hit home in a way the real stuff never has. Gibson's William Wallace embodied a kind of heroic spirit that proved irresistible when the film was released in 1995, when Scotland was still run by a Conservative government in London and the 100-year campaign for home rule was reaching a climax. "I remember going to Scotland for the première, and I couldn't believe it," Gibson says. "I was actually shocked – I've never seen anything like it. For the entire drive from the hotel to Stirling Castle (the crowd] was 50 deep. I couldn't believe that there was so much feeling and fervour. It was almost too much."

Watching Gibson's Wallace battle and bleed his way to his final rebelliously redemptive death, it's impossible not to be aware of the impact that the film has had in shaping the perception of Scotland and Scots. Here, the film has kept plenty of cultural commentators and historians in pub chat and an easy rant, but further afield the film has created an indelible image of this country. So it's odd to see how unlike Scotland the film looks and sounds. Ireland played Scotland's body double for much of the shoot (apart from a six-week, rain-soaked stint at the foot of Ben Nevis) and James Horner's Oscar-winning score is distinctly Irish-sounding too. None of this, though, has even remotely dented the power of Gibson's idealised vision. "I was aware of (the impact] and I became really aware of what a piece of art can do to change things," Gibson says. "It was shortly after, and I think Scotland was on the way to this anyway, that it got some kind of partial autonomy. And I think now it's got the whole banana, right?"

Er, no, Mel. That's not quite right. It's an odd moment for a lesson in Scottish politics (and 15 years too late, perhaps), but I offer a brief explanation of the current political situation – a Nationalist government within the UK. Gibson nods. "Yeah, but it started the ball rolling, right? Some people wanted me to feel guilty about that. You know, 'You've messed up history.' But actually there's very little history about the man; there's some and you kind of have to make up the bits in between because there wasn't somebody following him around writing it down. But he did exist and he did have an impact in his own time. It's a name in the consciousness of the Scots – they all know who he is."

There's no arguing with that. The Braveheart effect has rippled through most aspects of Scottish life. From Colin Hendry's dogged performances at Hampden, which earned him the Braveheart nickname, to Alex Salmond's closing line in a 1995 speech to a resurgent SNP ("Freedom, freedom, freedom" – what else?), Gibson's blue-daubed face has become a potent symbol. "It hit a chord," says Gibson. "Every culture, no matter where you come from, you're looking for the identity and to have it displayed to the world. If it's something you approve of and something you feel it does make a deep mark."

In some senses, when stacked against the accusation of anti-Semitism in The Passion of the Christ or the xenophobia of The Patriot, playing fast and loose with Scottish history (particularly given that so many Scots seem to enjoy it) has paled into a kind of insignificance in Gibson's career. For his part, Gibson is sanguine about a filmmaker's right to use history as simply a means to tell a story. "What I'm doing is giving you a cinematic experience first, educational second and inspirational after that. There are a few good histories on Wallace but all of them have gaps. The story is exciting, tragic and funny, and it also does something to the spirit – it's inspiring. It's about honour and heroism and sacrifice and freedom. It's a story that occurs again and again; there's a guy like that in every culture."

He's proud of Braveheart, he says, but looking back at the film with the benefit of experience, there are things he wishes he had done differently. There's an hour of footage that landed on the cutting room floor that no one has ever seen, he says. And instead of the negotiations that preceded the battles – Wallace playing the hard man with wisecracks and swagger – he wishes he had "just galloped out there, hit the guy on the head and killed him. Then it would've been on."

But the pressure of authenticity isn't one of the things that weighs upon him. "Wallace wasn't as nice as the character we saw up there, we romanticised him a bit. But that's the language of film, you have to make it cinematically acceptable. Actually he was a monster. He always smelled of smoke, he was always burning people's villages down. He was quite fond of going into garrisons and villages all by himself. He was like what the Vikings called a 'berseker'. We kind of shifted the balance a bit because someone has got to be the good guy against the bad guy; that's the way that stories are told. And they always have a bias and a point of view."

Gibson vowed that he would never take on the triple pressure of directing, starring in and producing a movie again after Braveheart. He has stuck to his word. The film picked up five Academy Awards but the experience "nearly killed" him, he says. In recent years, he has focused on directing, but next year he will appear in Martin Campbell's The Edge of Darkness. What prompted the return? "I felt like doing it again. I felt like a long enough time had elapsed," he says. "You get used up or you feel like you're not doing anything new, and that wasn't exciting to me so I started to drop back."

He's tentative in his explanation, but he says the way he feels about acting has changed. "Acting feels different. I'm not sure exactly what that is, but it used to mean a lot more. Maybe that sounds like I'm throwing it away and I'm not, I'll still do the best damn job I can, but it doesn't mean the same thing. I'm going to get the answer for myself one of these days. It's the male menopause, that's what it is."

The deflection joke is a Gibson trait, but beneath it there is a hint of something more serious and revealing. "Some guy said to me a long time ago, 'If you want to make yourself better go away and dig a ditch.' A lot of that has been going on – ditch-digging, vegetable-growing."

Gibson hasn't been back to Scotland since he finished his Wallace epic. He jokes that he's afraid to return, knowing how strongly people feel about the film. And then he knocks out another wisecrack that, no matter what you're sensitivities are about our national characteristics, tells you much more. "And I could never get sober." r

Braveheart Collector's Edition will be released on Blu-ray on 2 November by 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment (£19.99)

Viewpoint Pat Kane: Musician and writer

Is Scottish independence worth it if its narrative is face-painted blue, bares its collective arse at all critics, dreams fondly of its own guerrilla movement and renders the English as collectively either doltish, sadist or effete? Every time the SNP does one of its dumb appropriations of Mel Gibson's neo-fascist tartan epic, even an independence supporter like me sinks lower in his chair.

Gibson has subsequently shown himself to be one of the weirder Hollywood movie-makers, seemingly in love with blood sacrifice, one way or another. Isn't it time we consigned the brutal dualisms of this movie to the dustbin of Scottish memory?

It's no surprise that European and American neo-Nazis take it as an inspiration. And as Scottish independence – if and when it comes – will be a matter of mastering the complexities of politics, law and economics, the last thing we need is the stench of Gibson's macho and xenophobic version of national liberation in our nostrils. Sorry, compatriots: Braveheart no more.

Viewpoint T M Devine
Sir William Fraser professor of Scottish history and palaeography, University of Edinburgh

One thing is certain, the movie has dramatically raised Scotland's international profile and place on the world map, for good or for ill. The Wallace Monument at Stirling, for decades neglected and virtually ignored, is now one of the nation's star tourist attractions. drawing visitors from across the globe. Americans may be still uncertain about where Scotland actually is, but they do know it is the land of Braveheart, which has now become as famous a part of the Scottish iconography

Then there is the extraordinary impact of Braveheartism in Europe. Scottish festivals abroad have become a veritable growth industry, booming from almost zero activity in 1990, from Moscow to Amsterdam. An event in the German city of Leipzig draws nearly 20,000 people annually. For the first time, in 2007 thousands of Russian 'Scots' paraded in full Highland dress in front of the Kremlin. The most recent count suggests that there are now at least 160 of these fantasy events scattered across Europe.

Not all this of this has come about only because of Braveheart, but who can deny that the movie has done much to renew the remarkable world-wide romantic appeal of a fictitious Scotland. Mel as the successor to Ossian and Scott?

Viewpoint Neil Davidson
Senior research fellow, University of Strathclyde

Freedom is a noble thing, but what kind freedom did Braveheart offer us? In a telling scene, Edward I throws his son's gay lover to his death. Edward is the pantomime villain – he hates Scots and gays: boo, hiss. But here's the point; the scene is played for laughs, and the audience does laugh. As this suggests, the politics of the film are those of the right-wing, rifle-wielding backwoodsmen who think Barack Obama is a Kenyan commie and the NHS exists to kill your granny. Is this the kind of freedom we want for Scotland?

The film famously ends on the eve of Bannockburn, but long before then, before Wallace's death even, the Wars of Independence had become a struggle to see which gang of French-speaking, Latin-writing feudal banditti would exploit the Scottish peasantry. "Our" side won: fantastic. But freedom? As the Eagles used to sing: that's just people talking.

Viewpoint Hannah McGill
Director, Edinburgh International Film Festival

Braveheart's position in Scottish film culture is as wobbly as Mel Gibson's on-screen accent. It has more sentimentally invested in the idea of Scottishness than any other film, but its own racial profile is notoriously all over the place: Australian star/director, American screenwriter, English leading lady and – most controversially of alI – some Irish locations.

So, is it invalid as an icon of Scottish cinema? Not if you view it as what it is: one of the few big, fat, populist films to take Scotland as a subject, and as cross-bred, cobbled together, cynical and inconsistent as big fat populist films almost always are. Along with its more obviously 'authentic' contemporary, Rob Roy, Braveheart lent Scotland a presence in Hollywood as an inspiration and as a location. If Ireland got some temporary business out of Braveheart, Scotland – for better or worse – got its own permanent movie myth.