How old was Mel Gibson in ‘Braveheart?’

Right now, actor and director Mel Gibson is trending online due to unsubstantiated claims he is working on a documentary series about sex trafficking and not wild comments or actions he has carried out for a change. These — like others floated in the past — will likely turn out to just be a hoax, and in the wake of him being a conversation point, his prior work like Braveheart is coming up.

For those unfamiliar with the work, it is the name of a 1995 historical drama film where Gibson played Scottish knight Sir William Wallace. The work received a number of Oscars, is not generally considered to be historically accurate and, while Gibson has defended his directorial choices on the piece in the name of cinematic quality, there is one bit generally close to our real world.

Specifically, at the time of the work’s production, the now-67-year-old was at least close to the actual age range the real Wallace reportedly lived to be. He was executed at 35 and, with Gibson’s birthday being in 1956, he would have been between 38 and 39 during the movie’s production and its eventual release to audiences around the world. Other characters in the piece were substantially aged up for dramatic purposes (in reality, Princess Isabella of France was only a toddler when the film’s real events took place), and such shifts are so common in the entertainment industry today, it is now a trope across live-action and animation.

Movies like American Gangster have given real people children when they never had any, For a Few Dollars More pretends dynamite existed during the American Civil War when it actually did not, and in I, Tonya, major figures have no lines at all. Thankfully, this just may be changing. Increasingly these days, actors are sticking to roles they feel they are suited for given their current backgrounds, and Martin Scorsese’s incoming Killers of the Flower Moon epic is said to be accurate by representatives of the Osage nation. So, the days of Braveheart-like work may be numbered, but, even so, it is available to stream on Hulu right now.