For a man who once famously screamed, “They can take my life but cannot take my freedom!” it’s sad that his real-life freedom has in fact been taken by manic depression. Mel Gibsons’ chronic bout of the blues is so bad, it’s seen the legend fall hard from entertainment grace.

In 1979, a handsome young Australian actor named Mel Gibson became a star almost everywhere in the world after Mad Max hit cinemas. It wasn’t until 1981, though, when its sequel triumphed in America that Gibson became a Hollywood name to be reckoned with.

In 1987, he starred alongside Danny Glover in Lethal Weapon, a film that spawned three sequels and defined the buddy-cop movie genre.

To list all of Gibson’s triumphs as a leading man, director and producer would require most, if not all, of this issue of Gtribe, but one has to mention 1995’s multiple Oscar-winning Braveheart and 2004’s controversial The Passion of the Christ, the highest-grossing R-rated movie of all time.

But the man who was hailed as “the sexiest man alive” by People magazine in 1985 has always shown signs of being on an emotional roller coaster.

Widely known for being a rampant practical joker and a man with a very strange sense of humour, Mel would often moon the crew of his productions to “break tension” on set, and he even put a single-frame image of himself smoking a cigarette into one of the trailers for his 2006 Mesoamerican epic Apocalypto, which was anything but a light-hearted movie.

But this “up” or quirky sense of humour would be matched with “downs” or bouts of moody outbursts, which saw him embroiled in one controversy after another –most stemming from his unchecked mouth. Gibson has a widely documented history of alcoholism, claiming to have had his first drink at 13. This, combined with what he’s claimed to be manic depression, has led him to contemplate suicide, landed him in trouble with the law, seen him attend rehab on more than one occasion and saw him leave his wife, Robyn, and mother of his six children, after 26 years of marriage.

But things got really ugly on two occasions that stand out above the rest. On 28 July 2006, Mel was arrested for driving under the influence after being caught speeding. There was reportedly an open container of liquor in his car at the time. A leaked police report revealed that he unleashed a tirade of anti-Semitic abuse upon the arresting officer, who happened to be Jewish. Gibson admitted to the statements and apologised to the world, but the damage to his public profile was immense.

Then, in 2010, he pounded another nail into the coffin of public opinion when his now ex-girlfriend, and mother of his most recent child, filed a restraining order against him and charged him with domestic violence. A tape of a message in which he hurled unrepeatable abuse at the Russian pianist Oksana Grigorieva led to public outrage. In March 2011, Mel settled the case by pleading no contest to a charge of domestic battery. He slumped further into the blue.

But despite his ongoing episodes of disgraceful behaviour and the commercial flop of the 2011 comedy-drama The Beaver, in which he starred, he still has a lot going for him. He owns land all over the world, the rights to many of his films and has considerable assets to tide him over should he never star in another box-office hit again.

But the man has gone from one of the most beloved actors on earth to a cautionary tale for losing the respect of the very fans that built his success. And that, friends, is a very sad thing indeed.