Mel Gibson has revealed that his Malibu home was destroyed by the Los Angeles wildfires while he was in Austin, Texas, recording a podcast with Joe Rogan.
The Oscar-winning actor and director shared the news during a phone interview on NewsNation’s “Elizabeth Vargas Reports.” Despite the devastation, however, Gibson stated that he was holding up well in the aftermath.
“Obviously, it’s kind of devastating. It’s emotional,” he said. “You live there for a long time, and you had all your stuff. You remember [comedian] George Carlin talking about your stuff? I had my stuff there, and it’s all like, I’ve been relieved from the burden of my stuff because it’s all in cinders.”
Gibson also noted that he was “ill at ease” during his appearance on Rogan’s podcast because he was aware of the rapidly expanding wildfire in his neighborhood.
“When I got home, sure enough, [the house] wasn’t there,” he told Vargas. “I went home and I said to myself, ‘Well, at least I haven’t got any of those pesky plumbing problems anymore.'”
He said he and his girlfriend had evacuated, but she stayed in California while he went to Texas to do the podcast, according to WBAL-TV.
“I have never seen a place so perfectly burned,” Gibson said of his destroyed home. “You could put it in an urn.”
Other celebrities, including Milo Ventimiglia, Mandy Moore, Billy Crystal, Jeff Bridges, Paris Hilton and Ricki Lake have opened up about losing their homes, the local outlet said.
In a statement to CNN on Wednesday, Crystal said, “Words cannot describe the enormity of the devastation we are witnessing and experiencing. We ache for our friends and neighbors who have also lost their homes and businesses in this tragedy.”
“Janice and I lived in our home since 1979. We raised our children and grandchildren here. Every inch of our house was filled with love. Beautiful memories that can’t be taken away,” he added.
“We are heartbroken, of course, but with the love of our children and friends, we will get through this. We pray for the safety of the fire fighters and first responders. The Pacific Palisades is a resilient community of amazing people, and we know that in time, it will rise again. It is our home.”
The family beach house of Oscar-winning actor Bridges was destroyed by fire. He and his family are safe, according to his representative.
Actor and former talk show host Lake shared on her Instagram page Wednesday that she lost her “dream home” in the fires, writing, “It’s all gone.”
“It was our heaven on earth. The place where we planned to grow old together. We never took our heavenly spot on the bluff overlooking our beloved malibu for granted, not even for one second,” she wrote. She added that she is grieving the “immeasurable” loss of her home, where she and her husband got married three years ago, WBAL-TV added.
Meanwhile, “Lois & Clark” actor Dean Cain, who grew up in Malibu, revealed to Fox News Digital that all the homes he once lived in there and in nearby Pacific Palisades were destroyed in this week’s Los Angeles-area wildfires.
“I ended up having three different houses in Pacific Palisades, one that I owned, two that I rented and lived in,” Cain said. “The three of those Pacific Palisades’ [homes], all of those burned, gone. Pacific Palisades looks like someone dropped a nuclear weapon on top of it and just flattened everything. I’ve never seen anything like that. Also, three of the houses that I lived in in Malibu are gone.”
Cain said that when the Woolsey Fire hit in 2018, it burned his backyard but not his house.
“We’re used to this in Malibu,” he explained. “We get the wind, we get the fire, so we know how to deal with it. But when you have all the… tools taken away from you, no money, no brush clearance, no controlled burns, all of those things, you end up with a catastrophic situation like this.”
Cain stated that although his house survived the Woolsey Fire, his fire insurance was canceled afterward. He mentioned that this was part of the reason he left California for Henderson, Nevada, later that year.
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