From: New York Daily News
Published: Thursday, Sept. 16, 1993

Thousands applied, hundreds were chosen, so quite a few of the locals who responded to the call for extras when "The Man Without a Face" was filming in a handful of Maine coastal villages last summer got what they came for: a day's pay and a gawk at the film's director.
The unchosen, though, had to come up with other business in the neighborhood of the shoot if they were going to be lucky enough - or sufficiently adroit in the use of binoculars - to catch a glimpse of "The Man With Those Eyes": Mel Gibson, auteur at work.What is it about angst-infused, coming-of-age stories that holds such attraction for blue-eyed, profoundly beautiful men? Robert Redford made his directorial debut with "Ordinary People," the story of a emotionally afflicted teenage boy. In Gibson's "The Man Without a Face," 12-year-old Chuck Norstadt, played by Nick Stahl, is also a victim of a family that doesn't work, at least for him. He finds solace in the company of a lapsed teacher, Justin McLeod, who is shunned by the town because of his scarred, grisly visage and mysterious past.
Director Gibson decided early on to cast an international sex symbol in the McLeod role, even though, as he says, the part "covers half the assets." When William Hurt and several other name-brand actors said no, Gibson took the role himself.
So there Mel was, the man with two faces, before and behind the camera. Yet even with so much Gibson in evidence, he enjoyed a certain lightness of being. No one becomes a director seeking anonymity, except maybe a movie star.
"The people around you, the people on the set, become immune to you," says Gibson, reflecting on an aspect of directing he particularly enjoyed. "They're reacting to you on levels where you're talking about what color shoes they should have on, or whether you want a stuffed owl in the back of the shot."
Gibson, 37, is arguably one of the movie stars least comfortable with celebrity. But unlike other reluctant stars such as Harrison Ford and Michelle Pfeiffer, Gibson no longer makes a public show of his ambivalence. "I don't complain anymore," he says. "I did all that a long time ago."
So, the Mel Gibson of recent vintage, the one who has come to terms with his professional obligations, does interviews when he has a movie to flog - "I'm out there whoring," he says, laughing. Given that "The Man Without a Face" is vitally important to him, he's become the media's preferred trick, appearing on the cover of any entertainment magazine that will have him.
These days, meet-the-press Mel resembles the Mel of old only in the particulars - the lean body, the chiseled face and the interview uniform: jeans and cowboy boots. But that's not to say Mel rolls over for journalists. Gibson, whose career has swerved from the "Lethal Weapon" series to romantic comedies to "Hamlet," has not supplied himself with the sort of ready-made persona that other actors rely on. And he's not about to produce the real person. Who is that masked movie star? Don't ask. He's not telling. "I'm just doing a Popeye," he says at one point. "I y'am what I y'am."
And not what he was. A freshly minted star in 1981 with "Gallipoli," Gibson the next year won even more critical acclaim in "The Year of Living Dangerously," but reviews from those who encountered him in person during that period were not so kind: He had a reputation as a lout and a boor . Gibson was yet another celebrity in need of a good slap.
"It was like, man, I didn't know this was going to happen," he says, recalling that first enveloping wave of fame. "I got bitter. I was resentful."