Mel Gibson can survive abuse allegations, says Oliver Stone

Mel Gibson and Oksana Grigorieva at the Spanish premiere of the film 'Edge of Darkness' in Madrid

Mel Gibson was recorded verbally abusing Oksana Grigorieva, the mother of his child, but director Oliver Stone believes Hollywood will forgive him.





Although hardly flavour of the month after the allegations that he bruised his baby daughter during a row with his former girlfriend, Mel Gibson has won a vote of confidence from Oliver Stone, the maverick film director.

Stone tells Mandrake that the Oscar-winning star of Braveheart will continue to be offered leading roles in Hollywood. �Everyone is supposed to have an opinion [about Gibson], but most directors don�t work that way,� Stone said at the premiere of his latest film, South of the Border, at the Curzon Mayfair, in London.

He points out that press criticism of an actor is always immediate, whereas Hollywood works on a longer time scale. �Projects are developed slowly, and over the course of weeks, months, there will be projects, and I am sure many of them will want to have Mel Gibson in them,� he says.

Stone, who has won three Academy Awards for films including Midnight Express and Platoon, is no stranger to controversy himself. Criticised for promoting historical inaccuracies in such films as JFK, Stone also suggested that Adolf Hitler was �an easy scapegoat� in The Secret History of America.

Gibson�s former girlfriend, Oksana Grigorieva, 40, claimed last week that the 54-year-old actor had bruised his baby daughter during a row. Grigorieva intends to produce pictures of their daughter, Lucia, with an injured chin in a custody battle over the child.

She accused Gibson of punching her in the face and knocking out her teeth during a row in January when she was holding their then two-month-old daughter.

The accusation follows the release of expletive-ridden, taped telephone rants allegedly by Gibson in which he threatens Grigorieva.