From PEOPLE Magazine Click to enlarge
WHAT IS THAT OLD MEL MAGIC THAT HE weaves so well? Easy. He is just slightly, sexily, divinely out of kilt-er. Consider the roles that bring us back for more: crazed moralist Mad Max; around-the-bend Hamlet; trigger-tense Martin Riggs in Lethal Weapon; and blue-faced, butt-baring William Wallace in Braveheart, for which Gibson, 40, brought home two of five Oscars this March for Best Director and Best Picture. "A big part of his appeal comes from his personality," says designer Giorgio Armani, who swathed Gibson in his Academy Awards tux. "Because, after all, Mel is a character, something that comes; through in the constant twinkle in his eye." Even weathered by the decades and the blazing sun on the Down Under ranch he shares with Robyn, his wife of 15 years, and their six children, the pool-blue Gibson peepers continue to make jaws drop. Said Mel's Forever Young costar Isabel Glasser: "Those eyes really are that blue, and they're very disarming." But the whole looks issue has always discomfited the 5'10", 160-lb. actor, who once insisted, "I never considered myself a sex symbol." Says Brian Grazer, producer of this summer's Ransom: "If you bring his sex appeal to his attention, he just makes a joke about it. It's not in his lexicon. And he's not a trendy kind of person. His personality and his clothing and his behavior haven't changed each year." Great. Don't rearrange a thing for us.