Given that his film, Apocalypto, is already No 1 at the US box office despite the whole furore over his drink-driving arrest and anti-semitic tirade this summer, you'd think that somebody would be keeping Mel Gibson well away from the publicity circuit.
Gibson, however, is his own man, and he continues to make statements which suggest he is a long way from the contrition which Hollywood requires of "shamed" celebrities if they are to be forgiven for their sins.
A few days ago Gibson said he thought the press needed to "get over" the story of his arrest and comments. Now in his latest interview, with darkhorizons.com, he has described the incident as "a gift".
"The experience was a gift to me because it's made me really sort of scratch my head and focus on a couple of things that I needed to," He said. "It's working out real positive, and hopefully in other lives that I'll touch."
The Mad Max star also blamed the media for hyping up the story. "Unfortunately I think it's become more of a trend," he said. "After all, it sells more newspapers to actually focus on and identify someone and sometimes it gets out of hand. I think the balance is way off, but that's the way it is and you can't change that.
"Everybody goofs, everybody screws up and I tell ya, if you ask everybody in the world to raise their hand if they never said something vicious, something that they regretted or something stupid, there wouldn't be many people that wouldn't be able to raise their hands."
