From the Daily Mail website in the UK:
Bugged earrings, a scorned lover and the racist rant that could ruin Mad Mel Gibson
By PAUL SCOTT
Last updated at 9:53 PM on 8th July 2010
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Amid the whirlwind of the latest scandal to engulf him, Mel Gibson sent a round-robin text message to a select group of his Hollywood friends over the weekend, announcing that 'for obvious reasons' he had changed his mobile phone number.
The missive politely went on to ask them to add his new number to their contact books.
But it was Gibson's sign-off that spoke most, perhaps, about the precariousness of his current position.
Bitter split: Mel Gibson and Oksana Grigorieva have seen their acrimonious break-up spill become public
'Any messages of support gratefully received,' the troubled actor texted, more than a touch beseechingly.
Given the mood of anger in Hollywood over his most recent alleged racist rant, it's hard to imagine that his new phone has been exactly red hot with communications of warm reassurance.
Following claims Gibson used the n-word in a series of ugly recorded confrontations with his ex-lover, Oksana Grigorieva, the mother of his baby daughter, the showbusiness community is not in forgiving mood.
Comedienne Joan Rivers has come out publicly to call on fans to boycott the Braveheart star's movies, and members of the American pressure group the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People are discussing mounting demonstrations at cinemas showing his films.
Meanwhile, the film business is buzzing with rumours that Leonardo DiCaprio, who is due to start filming a big-budget Viking picture directed by Gibson, is seriously contemplating pulling out for fear of being dragged into the controversy.
Just to add to Gibson's problems, Hollywood's most high-profile female lawyer has waded in to demand he seeks anger management treatment.
Gloria Allred, who has represented Heather Mills and Tiger Woods's mistress Rachel uchitel, told the Mail: 'Mel Gibson needs to seek help. He is clearly in need of intense counselling for his apparent hatred of racial minorities and women.'
If that were not enough, last night there were even suggestions that Gibson could be charged with making a terrorist threat to his ex-lover.
Party time: The legendary Hollywood actor's eye for pretty girls was a source of conflict
It is claimed he told Miss Grigorieva during one phone call after their split in April: 'I am going to come and burn the f***ing house down.'
Los Angeles-based criminal defence attorney Steve Cron says: 'A terrorist threat can be anything designed to induce harm or kill another individual, it doesn't have to come from Al-Qaeda to be classified as terrorism.
'There is a real possibility that the police department or a prosecuting agency could take action.'
At the same time, the LA Department for Child and Family Services has revealed that following details of his alleged threats to his ex, they are planning to investigate whether Gibson should lose his rights to custody of Lucia, his eight-month-old daughter with pianist and former model Miss Grigorieva.
What an utter disaster for Gibson, 54, last week issued with a restraining order by his 40-year-old ex, who is reported to have recorded his four-letter outbursts.
In one rant, Gibson is allegedly heard criticising the way the surgically-enhanced Miss Grigorieva is dressed.
Drunk driver: Mel Gibson was arrested in Malibu after being pulled over and drunkenly ranting at police
'You're an embarrassment to me,' the Oscar-winning director and actor begins. 'You look like a f***ing pig in heat, and if you get raped by a pack of n******, it will be your fault.'
In a separate row, The Passion Of The Christ director - who is said several times to refer to her as a 'whore' - is allegedly heard telling Grigorieva: 'How dare you act like such a bitch when I have been so f***ing nice.'
The existence of the tapes, which a judge presiding over a custody battle between the warring former lovers has ruled must not - for the moment at least - be heard by the public, has emerged in what has become one of the most bitter separations in Hollywood history.
No wonder Gibson, who crucially has not denied the veracity of the recordings, is said to be so desperate to keep their contents a secret that he has sought his own restraining order banning his former girlfriend from releasing them.
Which does seem like a case of shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted.
But now Gibson has gone on the offensive, with members of his circle claiming he is the victim of a sting orchestrated by Russianborn Miss Grigorieva in a bid to win a massive pay-off to buy her silence.
And their claims coincide with an intriguing rumour doing the rounds of those in the know in Hollywood.
It is said the determined Miss Grigorieva deployed a microphone hidden in a pair of diamond earrings to tape the damning evidence against her famous lover.
Last night a member of Gibson's inner circle said: 'What we are dealing with here is a systematic attempt by this lady to try to put Mel in a position where he caves in to her demands on custody of their child and on the subject of how much he pays her.
'Let's not kid ourselves this is about the welfare of their child. It's just a good old-fashioned shakedown.'
While this is hardly an excuse for Gibson's own appalling behaviour, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that the subject of cold hard cash is central to the row which now seriously threatens his once stellar career.
The existence of the tapes was revealed just days after Miss Grigorieva went public with claims he had abruptly stopped funding her and their child in a row over custody.
Meanwhile, sources in the U.S. say that the break-up had been relatively amicable until Oksana hired a new lawyer last month who allegedly told her she is entitled to more money from her multi-millionaire ex.
Just to make matters worse, the pneumatic-lipped Miss Grigorieva is also said to have compiled a dossier of photos and medical records which chronicle violent confrontations with the Australian-raised actor.
Happier times: The couple were in a three-year relationship and had a child together before the split
On one occasion in January this year, she claims, a heated row ended with her breaking a tooth, knocking out a dental veneer and suffering concussion.
Gibson's people, who don't deny a 'loud argument' took place, say he attempted to restrain her because she was hysterical while holding the baby.
Whoever is telling the truth, Gibson is a man whose personal satnav appears to have set him on a course towards inevitable self-destruction.
This latest scandal comes four years after he was forced into issuing a humbling apology over another racist outburst.
The Mad Max star spouted a now infamous anti-Jewish tirade when he drunkenly claimed Jews were responsible 'for all the wars in the world', after he was arrested in Malibu for drink-driving.
Meanwhile, there are claims from some surrounding Miss Grigorieva that she was left angry and bemused during their three-year relationship by his refusal to live with her and their daughter, preferring to remain alone in his Malibu compound while she has been living 15 miles away in another of his properties in the Los Angeles suburb of Sherman Oaks.
After a series of rows about money, Gibson called off a planned Christmas Day wedding and is said to have bowed to pressure from friends who have long considered his fiercely ambitious new lover to be a gold-digger.
According to sources in the u.S., the dark-haired Oksana, who has dated a string of older, rich men, refused point-blank to sign a pre-nuptial agreement offered to her by Gibson which would have paid her $5 million (£3.25 million) a year for ten years should their planned marriage fail.
Gibson's older children, who range in ages from 30 to 11, are understood to have complained that the twice-married Miss Grigorieva, who was born into poverty in the Ukraine, had been trying to distance the actor from them.
Glory days: Gibson with co-star Danny Glover in a promotional shot for the 1987 film Lethal Weapon
Miss Grigorieva, who also has a 13-year-old son by former James Bond star Timothy Dalton, is said to have been attempting to persuade Gibson to give her a say in his financial dealings, including his large portfolio of international properties.
No wonder the stress of their volatile relationship seems to have taken its toll on Gibson.
And in a bid to regain his equilibrium, the actor - who is also negotiating a £300 million divorce from his first wife, Robyn - has turned to a series of ever more weird treatments.
The novelist Walter Kirn, who was recently invited by Gibson to interview him for American Men's Journal, describes one particularly odd recent encounter with him when they met in a New York loft for a game of poker.
Gibson, Kirn says, arrived and immediately unzipped a small black case containing a mysterious plastic tube from which he squeezed a noxious yellow ointment that he proceeded to rub over his forearms.
The actor told him the substance, called Selegiline, was derived from cows' brains.
'Mel claimed that it cleans the neurotransmitters and sharpens mental focus,' Kirn adds.
In fact, Selegiline - one of many potions and lotions Gibson carries with him everywhere in a bulging rucksack - is a powerful drug that is used to treat depression, Parkinson's disease and senile dementia.
Kirn, the author of Up In The Air, which was made into an acclaimed movie starring George Clooney last year, says Gibson told him the drug was helping him with the 'male menopause'.
Strange stuff. But then Gibson has long been held hostage by the personal problems that have dogged him throughout his hugely successful, 30-year Hollywood career.
During the height of his fame in the early 1990s, the long-suffering Robyn threatened to leave the heart-throb if he did not join Alcoholics Anonymous.
She also persuaded him to check into rehab and rediscover his once-staunch Catholic faith.
Later he admitted he had reached 'the height of spiritual bankruptcy' and had contemplated suicide, and it had been former dental nurse Robyn who had saved him from himself.
Controversial: The Passion of the Christ directed by Gibson attracted criticism from the Jewish community
But the marriage was blighted by regular claims of his taste for a succession of beautiful women.
And if sources close to Miss Grigorieva - who met the star on the set of his 2008 movie Edge Of Darkness - are to believed, it is a habit that Gibson has remained unable to kick.
Earlier this week, he was hit by allegations from a Polish actress who says that she had a three-month affair with Gibson last year during the time of Lucia's birth.
After the alleged affair fizzled out, 26-year-old Violet Kowal claims - rightly or wrongly - that the actor rang her and yelled: 'Listen, you bitch, do you know who this is? Don't f*** with me or I'll make you suffer.'
A chastened Gibson, meanwhile, is said to have spent the weekend deep in prayer with his personal confessor, Catholic priest Father Clement Procopio.
'It's hit Mel very badly,' an LA casting director, who has known Gibson for 20 years, told me this week.
'The knives are out for him. He just about escaped with his career when he blurted out that stuff about Jews, but this could really finish him.'
If that turns out to be the case, the troubled and deeply unpleasant Gibson will have only himself to blame.
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