Please Forgive Me

Mel Gibson. Photo Frank Micelotta/Getty Images.

It’s hard enough to backpedal one’s way out of “sugar tits,” let alone laying the blame for all the world’s wars upon “the Jews.” But following his anti-Semitic tirade during his DUI arrest last weekend, Mel Gibson is giving his all to saying he’s sorry. He’s even asked the Jewish community — much of which he alienated with his 2004 film The Passion of the Christ and for his refusal to distance himself from his Holocaust-denying father — “to help [him] on his journey through recovery.”

Is that going to be enough to salvage his career? Only time — and the box office of Gibson’s upcoming film Apocalypto — can tell. If history can teach Gibson anything, it’s that a choreographed tour of atonement and a well-crafted PR campaign can save almost anyone. Until we hear the verdict on Mel, here are 10 other celebrity scandals that once rocked the tabloids.

Who: Roscoe (Fatty) Arbuckle, comedian and actor
Scandal: This vaudeville-heavyweight-turned-silent-film-star was, in his day, even more popular than Charlie Chaplin; in 1921, he signed a then-whopping $1-million-a-year contract with Paramount Pictures. But at a drunken party celebrating the deal, starlet Virginia Rappe was found dead. Arbuckle was accused of her rape and murder.

Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle. Photo Hulton Archive/Getty Images.

Apology: Arbuckle maintained his innocence through three trials. When he was finally acquitted, the jury apologized to him. “Acquittal is not enough for Roscoe Arbuckle,” it wrote in its decision. “We feel that a great injustice has been done him. … There was not the slightest proof adduced to connect him in any way with the commission of a crime.”
Fallout: Pal Buster Keaton sent some directing work Arbuckle’s way (which the latter did under a pseudonym), but the actor was essentially blacklisted and never recovered from the scandal. He died of heart failure in 1933, at the age of 46, following years of heroin and alcohol abuse.

Roman Polanski. Photo Central Press/Getty Images.

Who: Roman Polanski, film director
Scandal: In 1977, the legendary director of Chinatown and Rosemary’s Baby pleaded guilty to having sex with a 13-year-old girl.
Apology: There never was one. To avoid a likely jail sentence, Polanski fled to Paris. At the time, he refused to speak to the press, but court reports noted that he was distraught over the 1969 murder of his wife, Sharon Tate, who was killed by followers of Charles Manson. Sources also said that Polanski — a survivor of the Krakow ghetto and Auschwitz — couldn’t bear the thought of being locked up.
Fallout: Polanski remains in exile in France. His controversial history was stirred up in 2003, when he received an Oscar for Best Director for his film The Pianist. Although he didn’t risk attending the ceremony in person, Polanski did receive support from an unlikely source. His victim, Samantha Geimer, now in her late 30s, went public, urging the world to “judge the movie, not the man.”

Rob Lowe. Photo MJ Kim/Getty Images.

Who: Rob Lowe, actor
Scandal: In 1989, the 24-year-old Brat Packer faced a civil lawsuit and a criminal investigation after the release of a videotape showing him having sex with a woman and a 16-year-old girl during the Democratic convention in Atlanta a year earlier.
Apology: The civil case was settled out of court, and Lowe performed community service to avoid charges of sexually exploiting a minor. “I could be the poster boy for bad judgment,” Lowe told the media.
Fallout: The rising star spent close to a decade in D-list purgatory, the low point being an Oscar-night performance of Proud Mary with Snow White. His career rehabilitation began with cameo performances in Wayne’s World and Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me. He finalized his comeback playing over-achieving deputy communications director Sam Seaborn in the Emmy-winning drama West Wing. The pilot featured Sam caught in a very Lowe-like scandal: He has a one-night stand with a woman who turns out to be a high-priced Beltway call girl.

Paul Reubens. Photo Spencer Platt/Newsmakers/Getty Images.

Who: Paul Reubens, a.k.a. Pee-wee Herman, children’s entertainer
Scandal: The comedian’s cult show, Pee-wee’s Playhouse, was riddled with campy double entendres and sexual innuendo; not only did Herman wear red lipstick, but Pee-wee’s playmates included a buff lifeguard named Tito and a butch postal worker called Reba the Mail Woman. (Get it? Male-woman.) However, when Reubens was caught masturbating in a Florida porn theatre in 1991, some critics didn’t find it all that funny. His stringy-haired, I-just-ate-a-squirrel-fer-lunch mug shot didn’t help matters.
Apology: Reubens pleaded no contest, paid a $50 fine for indecent exposure and agreed to produce an antidrug public service announcement as community service. Six weeks after his arrest, he appeared at the MTV Music Awards and asked the audience: “Heard any good jokes lately?” He finally spoke directly of the incident in 1999, when he told Vanity Fair magazine: “I didn’t feel [it was] the wrong thing to do.”
Fallout: Despite letters of support from 15,000 fans, CBS pulled Reubens’s show from the air. After all but disappearing for four years, he began making guest appearances on TV’s Murphy Brown, and later took small roles in films like Mathilda (based on the Roald Dahl story) and Blow, starring Johnny Depp. In 2004, the Playhouse series was released on DVD.

Hugh Grant. Photo Online USA/Getty Images.

Who: Hugh Grant, actor
Scandal: In 1995, fresh from his first U.S. box office hit, Four Weddings and a Funeral, the boyish Brit was caught with his pants down in the company of prostitute Divine Brown.
Apology: Two weeks after his arrest for “lewd behaviour,” Grant made a tail-between-the-legs mea culpa tour, promoting two new films — Nine Months and An Awfully Big Adventure — on Live with Regis and Kathie Lee, The Tonight Show and Larry King Live. He was duly contrite as he apologized to fans and longtime girlfriend, Elizabeth Hurley; he called his behaviour “disloyal and shabby and goatish.” He did slip in one quip, though, telling Jay Leno: “I’ve never been one to, you know, blow my own trumpet.”
Fallout: Hurley eventually kicked Grant’s butt to the curb, but his career took an upswing when he trimmed his foppish hair, dropped the Jimmy Stewart gosh-golly stammer and embraced his dark side. His turns as self-absorbed cads in Bridget Jones’s Diary and About a Boy are two of his best and funniest performances.

Eddie Murphy. Photo Kevin Winter/Getty Images.

Who: Eddie Murphy, comedian and actor
Scandal: In 1997, Murphy was stopped by police in a pre-dawn bust of a transvestite prostitute named Antisone Seiuli. Police had been watching Seiuli when Murphy picked the hooker up in a well-known sex-trade district of Hollywood.
Apology: Murphy blamed his late-night drive on a bout of insomnia and said he was just a Good Samaritan trying to help what he thought was a female prostitute by giving her a ride home. He told People magazine, that it was “an act of kindness that got turned into a f---king horror show.”
Fallout: Hardly any. The formerly foul-mouthed Murphy had already begun to remake himself as a PG-rated star with films like The Nutty Professor when the story broke. Dr. Doolittle, the first Murphy film to be released after the scandal, was a hit, grossing more than $140 million US.

Winona Ryder. Photo Steve Grayson/Getty Images.

Who: Winona Ryder, actress
Scandal: In 2001, the Oscar-winning star was arrested at an upscale boutique in Beverly Hills with $5,500 worth of stolen merchandise. She was later sentenced to three years probation and 480 hours of community service.
Apology: During the trial, a store security guard testified that Ryder told him: “I’m sorry for what I did. My director directed me to shoplift for a role.”
Fallout: Her flat-lining career was given a boost when Ryder became a hipster cause célèbre with a Free Winona T-shirt campaign. She even wore one herself on the cover of W magazine and while hosting an episode of Saturday Night Live. Ryder recently appeared in Richard Linklater’s A Scanner Darkly and will reunite with Heathers screenwriter-turned-director Daniel Waters in 2007 for the film Sex and Death 101.

R. Kelly. Photo Jed Jacobsohn/Getty Images.

Who: R. Kelly, singer
Scandal: Between June 2002 and January 2003, the R&B performer was charged with 33 counts of child pornography. Kelly had shown a predilection for underage girls as far back as 1994, when he was briefly married to singer Aaliyah, then 15 years old. The union was annulled by her parents after a few months.
Apology: Chocolate Factory, Kelly’s soul-infused, chart-topping 2003 album is blanketed with implicit “I’m sorrys.” At one point, he coos: “This song is dedicated to all of the ladies from all of the men … simply because y’all go through so much.” During an appearance on BET, Kelly confessed he’d “done a lot of wrong things.”
Fallout: None. The man is pure Teflon — and utterly without shame. The first song he recorded after the child pornography charges came to light was called Heaven, I Need a Hug. As one industry insider put it: “Everybody knows he’s a freak and the man needs help. But he makes good music.” Even Trapped in the Closet, Kelly’s is-it-demented-or-is-it-brilliant “hip-hopera” experiment, couldn’t undermine his following.

Michael Jackson. Photo Los Angeles Times/AFP/Getty Images.

Who: Michael Jackson, singer
Scandal: Which one? Take your pick. Rumours of pedophilia have chased Jackson since 1993, when a 14-month police investigation came up with no charges. That same year, Jackson settled a civil suit — in which he’d been accused of abusing a 13-year-old boy — out of court. In 2002, he dangled his baby Prince Michael II (otherwise known as “Blanket”) from a Berlin hotel balcony. The following year, he was charged with molesting a 13-year-old cancer patient.
Apology: Jackson admitted to making a “terrible mistake” in dangling Prince Michael over a hotel balcony, but contended that his relationships with young boys — which included regular sleepovers — were perfectly innocent.
Fallout: Jackson’s bizarre trial was upstaged by the singer’s even more bizarre antics, which included dancing to his own music atop a SUV outside the courthouse. To the glee of his fans, he was acquitted of all charges in 2005 and has since spent much of his time in self-imposed exile in Dubai.

Kate Moss. Photo Scott Wintrow/Getty Images.

Who: Kate Moss, model
Scandal: In 2005, after years of being blamed for popularizing the coat-rack-skinny aesthetic dubbed “heroin chic,” a British tabloid published a photograph of the catwalking party-girl snorting cocaine at a recording studio. She’d been visiting then-boyfriend and Babyshambles frontman Pete Doherty, himself a walking pharmacopoeia.
Apology: Moss apologized to “all the people I have let down” and promptly entered a rehab clinic.
Fallout: Minimal. H&M, Burberry and Chanel all dropped Moss as a model, but soon after, she signed new deals with Calvin Klein and Virgin Mobile. She has since graced the covers of several magazines, including the upcoming Vanity Fair.

Rachel Giese writes about the arts for CBC.ca.

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