Gibson on Beaver: 'I Faked It'

A hand puppet has been doing most of the public speaking for Mel Gibson since the release of The Beaver, but the AP notes that the star emerged slightly during the movie's Cannes premiere yesterday. Gibson turned up on the red carpet—after skipping an earlier news conference—and glibly responded when an interviewer asked how he got into his character's dark head space. "I faked it," Gibson said, adding, "Hey, I don't know. It doesn't bear too much analysis."

Jodie Foster, director and co-star of the darkly comic drama, kept up her defense for Gibson at yesterday's news conference, extolling her "kind and loyal and thoughtful" friend. "I think he's proud of what he's shown," she said of his performance, which critics have praised as one of the best of his career—and perhaps onscreen therapy for his much publicized personal troubles. "I think he wants people to see that side of him. And he's an incredibly private man, so what he shows on the screen is as deep as you could possibly get, and that's our way as actors of telling people, `This is who I really am.'" (More Mel Gibson stories.)