In 2010, partway through divorcing Mel Gibson, Robyn Moore Gibson went to a Los Angeles court and filed a statement defending him.
Gibson was in serious trouble at the time. Recordings of him screaming threats at his girlfriend had leaked online, the county sheriff had opened a domestic violence investigation, and his talent agency had dropped him. Moore, who was in the middle of leaving him, told the court he had never been violent toward her or their children. No one had asked her to. Then she stepped out of view, the way she usually did.
By the time the divorce was final the next year, Moore would walk away with a reported $425 million, one of the largest settlements in Hollywood history. For a woman attached to a number that big, very little about her is widely known.
| At a glance | |
|---|---|
| Full name | Robyn Denise Moore |
| Born | 1960 |
| Nationality | Australian |
| Known for | Former wife of Mel Gibson |
| Former job | Dental nurse |
| Children | Seven |
Table of Contents
Who is Robyn Moore Gibson?
Robyn Moore Gibson, born Robyn Denise Moore in 1960, is the Australian former wife of the actor and director Mel Gibson. She worked as a dental nurse in Adelaide before they married.
She is sometimes confused with another Australian named Robyn Moore, a voice actress who played the cartoon koala Blinky Bill. They are two different people.
Moore grew up close to the acting world. Her father was the British actor Stephen Moore, one of the country’s most reliable character players. He won a Laurence Olivier Award in 1983, earned a Tony nomination on Broadway the same year, and voiced the depressed robot Marvin in the radio and television versions of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. His career ran nearly fifty years and included A Bridge Too Far and Brassed Off. He died in 2019, at 81.
She met Gibson in 1977, soon after he finished the first Mad Max. He was an unknown stage actor with the South Australian Theatre Company, she was a dental nurse, and the two shared a house in Adelaide before they became a couple.
Inside Mel Gibson and Robyn Moore’s marriage
They married on June 7, 1980 at a Catholic church in Forestville, near Sydney. She was 19, he was 24, and they signed no prenuptial agreement. Their first child, Hannah, was born that November while Gibson was filming overseas.
Six more children followed over the next two decades: the twins Christian and Edward in 1982, William in 1985, Louis in 1988, Milo in 1990 and Thomas in 1999.
As Gibson became one of the most bankable actors in the world, Moore raised their family largely away from the cameras. The Daily Beast later described her as his “rock of Gibraltar,” with little interest in red carpets. Some of the children went into film regardless. Milo Gibson has acted in Hacksaw Ridge and The Outpost, Christian works as a camera operator, and Hannah, the eldest, married the blues guitarist Kenny Wayne Shepherd in 2006, with Gibson walking her down the aisle.
The $425 million divorce settlement
The marriage held for 26 years. It came apart in July 2006, when Gibson was arrested for drunk driving in Malibu and made the antisemitic comments that would follow him for years. He and Moore separated the next day.
She filed for divorce in April 2009, around the time Gibson’s relationship with the Russian singer Oksana Grigorieva became public. A judge in Los Angeles signed off on the divorce on December 23, 2011.
The terms were what drew attention. Estimates put Gibson’s fortune as high as $850 million, built over a career that included The Passion of the Christ and the Lethal Weapon films. Because the couple had no prenuptial agreement, and California treats money earned during a marriage as shared, Moore was entitled to half. People reported her settlement at around $425 million, the most expensive celebrity divorce on record at the time. Court filings obtained by TMZ showed it also handed her half of Gibson’s Screen Actors Guild pension, and People reported she would receive half of his film residuals for the rest of his life. Once it was over, she dropped his surname and went back to Robyn Moore.
Robyn Moore’s life after the divorce
Almost everything on the public record about Moore since 2011 comes from California real estate filings, where she has been an active buyer and seller in one of the most expensive property markets in the country.
She has owned four homes in Malibu since the divorce:
- a house in Malibu Cove Colony, bought in 2012 and sold two years later
- a ranch in the foothills that burned down in the 2018 Woolsey fire
- a mansion on Broad Beach, bought for $18 million in 2014
- a clifftop compound on Point Dume, bought for $17.5 million in late 2020
The Broad Beach house turned the biggest profit. According to Variety, she sold it in 2021 to the investor Howard Marks for $29.2 million, more than $11 million above what she paid. The Point Dume property, where she is believed to live, looks out over Zuma Beach and has a private staircase down to the sand.
Away from real estate, she has kept ties to a few causes, including a project that stages Shakespeare inside prisons and a children’s charity, Mending Kids, where Gibson once carried out community service ordered by the court.
What the settlement could not buy
The divorce was supposed to be an ending. Instead it became the headline that follows her everywhere. The money gave Moore room to disappear from public life, and that absence is the reason the $425 million is still the first thing most people learn about her.
She took back her maiden name and a fortune almost no one ever sees, then built a life she has kept to herself. When pieces of it surface, in a property deal or a line in a court file, they arrive under the same label they always have: Mel Gibson’s ex-wife. Whether she counts that as freedom or a cage, she has never said.
