Robert Downey Jr asks Hollywood to forgive Mel Gibson

The award night that should have been all about Robert Downey Junior turned out to be all about Mel Gibson.

Mel Gibson is not very popular in Hollywood but on Friday night, a past deed came back to embrace him. When Robert Downey Jnr was honoured with the American Cinematheque Award, he paid tribute to Gibson and asked Hollywood to forgive him.

"Unless you are without sin and if you are, you're in the wrong f***ing industry, you should forgive him and let him work" he said. It was Mel who gave him a second chance when he was in and out of rehab and no one would give him a job. He gave him a movie role and in return, all he asked was for him to help out the next guy and ironically "the next guy" turned out to be Mel Gibson himself.

So did something terrible happen to Mel Gibson that changed him or has he always been the difficult, angry man he appears to be. On 7 June 1980, Mel Gibson, an unknown actor and Robyn a dental nurse, were married in the Roman Catholic Church in Sydney and they had six sons and one daughter together. When he returned to America after the success of the Mad Max films, he had the reputation of being an excellent husband and father, he took his children to mass every Sunday morning and appeared to be enjoying family life.

He spent millions of his own money making The Passion of the Christ. When the film came out in 2004, Jewish groups were outraged by the way Gibson had portrayed them in the movie - the bloodthirsty murderers of Jesus Christ.

But in trying to understand Mel we have to look to his father - Hutton Peter Gibson - a WWII veteran and father of 11 children. He's an outspoken critic of the Roman Catholic Church and in an interview he did in 2003 he questioned how it was possible for the Nazis to dispose of six million bodies during the Holocaust. He also has odd-ball conspiracy ideas about the September 11 terror attacks.

Mel Gibson suffers from one of the worst addictions - he's an angry drunk. His ugly anti-Simitic rants were captured on film and he admitted "slapping" Oksana Grigorieva to bring her back to reality. To her credit, his ex wife Robyn, the person who knows him better than anyone else, has remained silent about what went on during their long marriage.

Gibson's bad behaviour has obviously hurt his career, he was dropped from a cameo in "Hangover 2" after cast-members rebelled and other opportunities were missed. Downey appealed to the audience "I urge you to forgive my friend his trespasses," he said "Allow him to pursue this art without shame".