But his latest film "Edge of Darkness," which opens next week, has the star back doing what he does best: Going just a little crazy.

Gibson plays a homicide detective investigating the death of his daughter, who slowly comes to realize a corporate and government coverup is trying to pave over his little girl's demise. In response, Gibson goes on a rampage, tossing aside the badge in a quest for vengeance.

It got us thinking that a few A-listers play batty and ballistic as convincingly as Gibson, flying off the hinges with terminal velocity. Why not take a look back through the actor's five craziest, juiciest roles.

Nick Marshall,

"What Women Want"

It may have been Gibson's cutest role, but it was still plenty crazy. Here's the guy who thinks he knows everything women desire, who then - surprise! - finds out he now also possesses the ability to hear the inner voice of every female who skirts past his office. Not only does he discover that most women think he's a chauvinist pig; he actually sets out to mark down their comments and strategize ways of manipulating them to his benefit. Sure, the movie was marketed as a comedy, but there's something about this whole premise that is both unsettling - asking us to identify with a pretty wretched chap - and bizarre. And what if he was just hearing fictional voices in his head, all along? That's one of the first signs of insanity, you know.

Martin Riggs,

"Lethal Weapon"

It was the movie franchise that took Gibson to the very top of Hollywood. Thanks to "Mad Max," the actor had already flexed his law-and-order muscle. In "Lethal Weapon," he sets aside some of the angry vengeance for more of a whimsical suicidal streak. He plays opposite a sober family man (Danny Glover) as the homicide detective whose wife has died in a car accident, leaving him unafraid of death and willing to jump heroically into the middle of any deadly situation. He looks crazy, what with his out-of-control hair, trashy clothing and emotional depression. He's angry with a death wish - the original Jack Bauer, and the ideal cop to save the day in a 48-hour countdown of carnage.

Hamlet, "Hamlet"

Crazy on a Shakespearean level, Gibson stepped into the shoes of young, mad Hamlet in 1990, delivering one of the most memorable big-screen visions of the Prince of Denmark. Haunted by his dead father's ghost, tormented over Ophelia's death and sickened by his mother's infidelity to her husband's memory, Hamlet unleashes a ferocious - close to suicidal - volley against the men he hates, ensuring in a final scene the obliteration of almost everyone close to the crown. Gibson's take on Hamlet is that of a young man, bursting with life and energy, who slowly gets stripped of his strength and sanity one body blow after another. By the time he delivers the iconic "To Be Or Not To Be" speech, he helps us to see the life that has drained from this young hero's eyes. By playing up the hope, he helps us to feel the despair.

Graham Hess, "Signs"

In hindsight, the craziest things about "Signs" is that it turns out that Gibson actually isn't crazy at all. By casting the crazed icon as a man who actually has it all figured out, Director M. Night Shyamalan pulls a big one over on the audience. Gibson plays a farmer who senses that something's wrong in his rural paradise. The wind sounds odd, he sees bizarre movements out there in the corn field and then the crop circles start to appear, pointing to his home as ground zero for something supernatural. His farmer, a former priest, is a terrified man, surrounded by fear. And then one night when all hell breaks loose, we realize that his terrors were justified - prescient even - all along.

Walter Black,

"The Beaver"

Jodie Foster and Mel Gibson worked together on the rather charming western comedy "Maverick" back in 1994, and they've teamed up together once again to make what might just be one of 2010's strangest concoctions. "The Beaver," is scheduled to be released later this year. Foster directs Gibson as Walter Black, an all-around nutcase. Black spends his days walking around with a puppet of a beaver on his hand - a puppet that he insists to friend and colleagues is a living creature. It's hard to tell what will be better here: The sound effects Gibson produces to prove the beaver is alive or all the dropped jaws and double-takes that should greet him at every turn.

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