Mel Gibson’s legacy in Hollywood is equally grandiose as it is notorious, since he had a string of unfortunate public controversies that permanently marred his once more family-friendly image. Perhaps nothing typifies Gibson’s reputational reversal and downfall from his once-superstar status more than his separation from ex-wife Robyn Moore Gibson, formerly known as Robyn Denise Moore, in 2009. But just what has Robyn been up to since the divorce and why did they split, to begin with?
First of all, the separation was significant for Gibson, from a public image standpoint, because the pair had been married for 29 years by the time the ink dried on the divorce paperwork. This was the culmination of a number of controversies that had been swirling around Gibson at the time, shifting the general perception of him from being part of one of Hollywood’s greatest and most admired power couples to being sized up in the public’s eye as a more unhinged and unpredictable loner now on the fringes of the mainstream.
Unsurprisingly, Gibson and Robyn separated immediately after the Mad Max actor was arrested for drunk driving in 2006, in which Gibson was heard spouting vile antisemitic remarks during the arrest, as covered by ABC News.
In a joint statement by the Gibsons as part of the divorce filing, “irreconcilable differences” was cited as the reason. But the actor would later squarely blame it on himself.
According to Gibson himself, in a 2011 interview with Deadline (via the Wayback Machine), Robyn and Gibson separated just days after the drunk driving arrest. After they separated, Gibson would later say on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno (via Express UK) that he was to blame for their separation, and that if anyone should be judged in the situation, it was him. As he explained at the time,
“Look, when it’s all said and done, I did a pretty good hatchet job on my marriage myself.”
Even after Robyn and Gibson divorced, the Conspiracy Theory actor continued irreparably damaging his own reputation by being caught saying the n-word in a leaked voicemail message to his then-girlfriend, Oksana Grigorieva.
As for Robyn, who is the mother of seven of Gibson’s children and a dental nurse, she walked away with half of Gibson’s $850 million dollar fortune as part of the divorce. At the time, it was considered the largest divorce payout in Hollywood history, according to People.
In 2015, Robyn put up for sale a home the couple once shared in Agoura, Los Angeles, California. Robin listed the home for $1.79 million, after the couple originally purchased it in 2007 for north of $2 million, according to the LA Times.
In 2021, Robyn once again posted a home for sale. But this time, it was a home that she purchased after the divorce and never shared it with Gibson. A $32 million home in Malibu, California was posted by Robyn as being for sale, according to the New York Post. And that is not the only piece of property that Robyn has been involved with in Malibu. As the NY Post explained,
“Moore purchased a $17.5 million Malibu home [in late 2020], and she previously owned two other Malibu homes, one that burned down in the 2018 Woolsey wildfire and the other that she sold to real estate developer Robert Flaxman.”
Since Gibson’s divorce from Robyn, the actor has tried to make a comeback in Hollywood several times. This has included receiving another Oscar nomination for directing Hacksaw Ridge, the war drama starring Andrew Garfield. However, I think it’s safe to say that Gibson’s reputation has never fully recovered.
As for Robyn, it would appear that she has garnered a knack for real estate investing.