Jonathan Rhys Meyers was spotted enjoying a friendly chat with Mel Gibson in Malibu recently, in his first public sighting since reportedly being charged with DUI.
The troubled actor, 43, was this month reportedly formally charged with a DUI by the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office following his November arrest.
And just one day after the charges were allegedly filed, the screen star appeared upbeat and carefree as he chatted with Gibson, 65.
Friendly chat: Jonathan Rhys Meyers was spotted enjoying a friendly chat with Mel Gibson in Malibu recently, in his first public sighting since reportedly being charged with DUI.
Stepping out to pick up some groceries, Meyers looked casually cool in a grey top and trousers with a black coat as he spoke with Gibson by his car.
Donning a baseball cap, Lethal Weapon star Gibson was seen wearing a sling on his arm as the two screen stars caught up with one another.
Days later, US Weekly reported that beleaguered actor Meyers is facing two criminal charges after crashing a car in Malibu two months ago.
The publication claims that court records show Meyers faces ‘one count of driving under the influence of alcohol’ while he was also charged with ‘driving with a blood alcohol content of 0.08 percent or more’.
Charges: The troubled actor, 43, was this month reportedly formally charged with a DUI by the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office following his November arrest
Upbeat: Just one day after the charges were allegedly filed on December 30, the screen star appeared upbeat and carefree as he chatted with fellow actor Gibson
Casually cool: Stepping out to pick up some groceries, Meyers looked casually cool in a grey top and trousers with a black coat as he spoke with Gibson by his car
The Bend It Like Beckham star is said to be due in court on February 25 after prosecutors filed the case on December 30.
Meyers was charged with driving under the influence and subsequently released from jail on November 9 after crashing a car in Malibu. His bail was said to be set at $5,000.
MailOnline has contacted Jonathan Rhys Meyers’ representatives for comment.
In November, a Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department spokesperson told People that the 43-year-old actor received a a misdemeanour DUI charge after the accident in the beach city.
The actor – whose battle with alcoholism has been well documented over the years – is believed to have had a ‘solo and minor’ car accident at around 5pm on Sunday 9 November, TMZ reported.
Sling: Donning a baseball cap, Lethal Weapon star Gibson was seen wearing a sling on his arm as the two screen stars caught up with one another
Day in court: The Bend It Like Beckham star is said to be due in court on February 25 after prosecutors filed the case on December 30
When police arrived at the scene, The Tudors star showed signs of being intoxicated and subsequently failed a field sobriety test, the website claims.
Jonathan was reportedly ‘well past’ a legal limit for alcohol and was arrested for misdemeanour DUI and taken into custody.
MailOnline contacted Jonathan Rhys Meyers’ representatives for comment at the time.
It came after the star was pictured in early October, taking a run on the beach with son Wolf, three. Jonathan is believed to have had six stints in rehab – first checking into a centre in Malibu in 2005 seeking treatment for alcohol abuse, before returning two years later in 2007.
He checked in for a third time in 2009. In November 2011, the star was ordered by a French court to pay a restitution of €1,000 and was given a judgement of a suspended sentence for public intoxication 24 months earlier.
Meyers also publicly apologised to his fans in 2015 for a ‘minor relapse’ after pictures surfaced of him on a street drinking straight from a bottle of vodka.
Criminal charges: US Weekly reported that beleaguered actor Meyers is facing two criminal charges after crashing a car in Malibu two months ago
Alcohol: Court records show Meyers faces ‘one count of driving under the influence of alcohol’ while he was also charged with ‘driving with a blood alcohol content of 0.08 percent or more’
In July 2018 the star vowed to stay sober after being detained following a drunken row with his wife Mara Lane onboard a plane.
DailyMail.com exclusively reported the Bend It Like Beckham star screamed ‘f*** you, I’m going to divorce you’ at his wife when she asked him to stop smoking his e-cigarette on a plane, a passenger revealed, before the actor was detained by police at LAX.
The Irish actor was on an American Airlines flight from Miami to Los Angeles with his wife Mara and their then one-year-old son Wolf when he allegedly got into a drunken fight with her.
A fellow passenger, who was sitting in first class behind the actor, told the Sun Online that Meyers was behaving ‘erratically’ and had been intimidating other passengers throughout the flight.
He had been ordering ‘drink after drink’ and went to the toilet more than a dozen times – and refused to stop smoking his e-cigarette.
He was so inebriated, the passenger added, that he didn’t notice his jeans had fallen down to his knees at one point.
Rehab: Jonathan is believed to have had six stints in rehab – first checking into a centre in Malibu in 2005 seeking treatment for alcohol abuse, before returning two years later in 2007
Apology: Meyers also publicly apologised to his fans in 2015 for a ‘minor relapse’ after pictures surfaced of him on a street drinking straight from a bottle of vodka
Eventually, flight attendants asked if his wife, who had separated herself from her husband by putting a privacy screen up, to see if she could intervene.
‘They told her that if he didn’t stop using the e-cigarette we’d have to land the plane early and get him off so she tried to tell him that,’ the passenger said.
‘That’s when he really lost it, he was yelling at her ‘f*** you, shut the f*** up, I’m divorcing you when I get back, you’re annoying leave me the f*** alone.’
‘Then he was ranting and screaming: ‘Who says I’m using e-cigarettes? Who? Who? Show me who said it.’
According to another passenger, the actor was being difficult even before he got on the flight in Miami.
‘Before we boarded in Miami, as the wheelchair and other people who need assistance were boarding first he pushed to the front with his wife and child shouting about having a first class ticket and that he should be boarding first,’ the passenger told DailyMail.com.
Pensive moment: At one point in their conversation, Meyers appeared to be somewhat pensive
Heading home: In the end, veteran Hollywood screen star Gibson was seen climbing into his car to continue with his day
‘When I was getting off I saw the cars and Jonathan Rhys Meyers surrounded by cops.
‘On the way off the plane a crew member in pilots uniform said that if he had known about his behaviour in Miami he wouldn’t have let him board.
‘The pilot told me he was going to try and get him banned from American,’ the passenger said.
Meyers allegedly started verbally abusing his actress and producer wife during the profanity-laden argument.
Los Angeles Airport Police told DailyMail.com that they received reports Meyers was causing a ‘disturbance’ on the plane at about 8pm.
Sources told TMZ that the Bend It Like Beckham star had been drinking at the time.
The fighting is said to have upset nearby passengers.
At one point during the flight, Meyers allegedly went to the bathroom to try and smoke his e-cigarette but was told by a flight attendant that he couldn’t do so.
Police said Meyers complied with the attendant’s request but continued to be ‘agitated and argumentative’ with his wife when he returned to his seat.
The actor was detained on the tarmac when the flight landed so police could speak to witnesses.
Row: In July 2018 the star vowed to stay sober after being detained following a drunken row with his wife Mara Lane onboard a plane
Passengers said they were stuck on the plane for more than an hour as a result with multiple police vehicles surrounding the aircraft.
Meyers denied using his e-cigarette, which is a federal violation and can result in a fine of up to $4,000.
Police said he was ‘admonished’ for his behaviour and then released without charge.
In an interview on Larry King Now, the actor vowed to stay sober and admitted drinking doesn’t ‘suit’ him as he spoke about the incident.
The Dracula star recalled: ‘My wife and I had been travelling since 3 o’clock in the morning from Peru back to Los Angeles.
‘And they gave away our tickets – it was just a problem with the airline. We had our baby, who was teething at the time, and it was all kind of frustrating.
Adding: ‘So we eventually got on the flight and my wife went to sleep and I very stupidly decided to order a drink. When my wife found that I’d ordered a drink, she got very, very angry with me because I shouldn’t drink. It doesn’t suit me and I had been sober for a long time.’
Jonathan admitted he was ‘upset’ by his actions but had apologised to all involved in the incident and thanked police for being ‘incredibly kind and understanding’.
He continued: ‘And so I felt that mistake and I got upset and I took out an e-cigarette. And the airline staff told me that I wasn’t allowed to smoke an e-cigarette so I put it away.
‘Then I spoke to the Los Angeles police once we got there, who were incredibly kind. Incredibly understanding. I apologised for my behaviour, and that’s the entire story.’
In a brutally frank interview with Event Magazine in July 2018, Jonathan said: ‘I’ve let myself down by relapsing, and it’s my responsibility. Nobody else is to blame.’
He revealed that he did not drink until the age of 26 and says: ‘I actually don’t like the taste of alcohol.’
He said: ‘I would be known as somebody who relapses with problem drinking, not alcoholism. I don’t suffer from alcoholism – I suffer from an allergy to alcohol every time I drink it.
‘When I drink, the consequences are so devastating that it is a problem,’ he says. ‘But I never need a drink. It’s not something I crave.’
Heartbreaking: Meyers also publicly apologised to his fans in 2015 for a ‘minor relapse’ after pictures surfaced of him on a street drinking straight from a bottle of vodka (pictured in 2018)
As well as the incident in LA, he was arrested for drunkenness at terminals in Dublin in 2007 and Paris in 2011.
He said: ‘People who go through this look for things in their life that trigger them.
‘And airports are a trigger for me, because they make you sit there for three hours, you can’t smoke and you’re surrounded by alcohol. That is not an excuse, there’s never an excuse for me to drink.’
The Irish actor said he was seeking professional help after the incident, as he has done many times before – to stay sober.
‘Last week on a plane back from Peru, after eight months of sobriety, I decided to have a few drinks. My wife was upset at me, and I learned my lesson. I got off the aeroplane, went straight back to my meetings and got sober immediately.’
‘And you know, I can speak all the words, but my actions tell the difference. So my action was to go home, apologise to my wife, call who I needed to call and explain to them exactly what had happened.
‘My responsibility is not to take the first drink… and I failed, but I realised that I failed and I got back up.’
In 2007, just before his mother’s death, he was arrested at Dublin Airport for drunkenness, and in 2011 he received a suspended sentence and was fined £860 for a similar meltdown at Paris’s Charles de Gaulle airport.
The 2018 incident followed a trip to South America, where he had been receiving therapy for his issues.
He explained that while giving up alcohol is the first stage in recovery, ‘you’ve got to work on the reasons why you did it in the first place.
Acclaimed: Jonathan is pictured as Henry VIII with Natalie Dormer as Anne Boleyn in The Tudors
‘Sometimes when you go through therapy, it opens up emotions that you haven’t felt for a few years and you leave yourself vulnerable.’
He added: ‘People who go through this, they look for things in their life that trigger them. And airports are a trigger for me, because they make you sit there for three hours, you can’t smoke and you’re surrounded by alcohol. That is not an excuse however…
‘There’s never an excuse for me to drink. But sometimes there are triggers that make you more vulnerable. I’ve relearnt that vulnerability and it’s now fresh in my mind again.’
‘I’ve let myself down by relapsing, and it’s my responsibility. Nobody else is to blame.’
‘I’ve been to a lot of rehab centres in my life… I went to three in one year and I talked to my therapist,’ he said.
Family: The Irish actor said he was seeking professional help after the incident, as he has done many times before – to stay sober (pictured with Mara and Wolf in August 2018)
‘I would be known as somebody who relapses with problem drinking, not alcoholism. I don’t suffer from alcoholism – I suffer from an allergy to alcohol every time I drink it. But once I stop, I never think about it again.
‘That doesn’t mean that the problem is any less, it just means I have a different version of it. But when I drink, the consequences are so devastating that it is a problem. But I never need a drink. It’s not something that I crave.’
Rhys Meyers says he didn’t start drinking until the age of 26, ‘then I stopped at 27 till [I was] 30, and then it’s just been a few day relapses from then on. But I’ve never continuously drunk for any long period of time – I actually don’t like the taste of alcohol.’
‘No. It never filled an emptiness. It was more about… I’m not quite sure what it was about. First of all, I’ve never liked drugs, so alcohol was legal. You could go to a bar and have a drink, the same as everybody does.’
‘It puts you to sleep. You just have a drink and you go to sleep. You can forget about whatever was bothering you.’
He also relapsed when his wife Mara tragically miscarried their baby daughter Willow in September 2017.
Rhys Meyers’s upbringing was ragged enough to partially explain his subsequent problems. His father, folk musician John O’Keeffe, walked out when Jonathan was three, taking his two youngest sons, Jamie and Paul, and leaving their mother Geraldine to raise Jonathan and his brother Alan in a council house in Cork, Ireland.
She, too, had issues with alcohol, and Rhys Meyers has previously said that she would spend her dole money on drink, leaving him at times with no option but to steal food to survive.
When asked if he could attribute his drinking problems to hereditary reasons, Rhys Meyers is adamant: ‘I don’t believe that. I’ve got three brothers and they have no problems, so it’s not hereditary.’
After being expelled from his Catholic school for truancy, he spent most of his time in the local pool hall, where he was spotted by agents casting for the David Puttnam film War Of The Buttons.
![Speaking out: Meyers says he didn’t start drinking until the age of 26, ‘then I stopped at 27 till [I was] 30, and then it’s just been a few day relapses from then on. But I’ve never continuously drunk for any long period of time – I actually don’t like the taste of alcohol.’ (pictured in 2018)](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2021/01/04/23/37604428-9112779-image-a-5_1609804460415.jpg)
Speaking out: Meyers says he didn’t start drinking until the age of 26, ‘then I stopped at 27 till [I was] 30, and then it’s just been a few day relapses from then on. But I’ve never continuously drunk for any long period of time – I actually don’t like the taste of alcohol.’ (pictured in 2018)
Though he didn’t get the role, he ended up in a Knorr soup commercial and since then has barely stopped working.
Discussing his therapy, he said: ‘I’ve been at meetings with politicians, high-court judges, one of the richest men in the world and a homeless man. They are all very different in their walks of life, except for one thing that makes them all the same – they have to deal with whatever they have to deal with.’
He knows many who haven’t survived – ‘I’ve been to a lot of funerals’ – but says he never thought it could happen to him. ‘No. I will not let it be me.’
‘I am confident [I will succeed}. I will always get through. The one thing I’ll never do is give up.’
Jonathan tied the knot wife his wife Mara in 2016. The couple welcomed their first child later the same year.
Previously, Mara credited the Irish star for ‘being a natural’ when it comes to fatherhood in the months that followed Wolf’s birth.
Now speaking to the Irish Independent, the Cork native, who was supporting 25 years of Irish children’s charity Barretstown, explained that welcoming his first child has given him a new perspective on life.
He said: ‘I’m much happier than I have ever been. Once you have your first child, you become the past. We’re all busy giving out to ourselves and driving ourselves forward. A child gives you a new perspective on life.’
Aside from discussing fatherhood, the Bend It Like Beckham actor got his start in acting aged just 16 after a casting agent spotted him in a pool hall in Cork while looking for boys to star in Irish film classic, The War of The Buttons.
Shortly after his mother died in November 2007, Jonathan gave an interview to the Mail on Sunday’s Live magazine to promote the new series of his show The Tudors, in which he insisted his drinking had been ‘blown out of all proportion.’
Career: After being expelled from his Catholic school for truancy, he spent most of his time in the local pool hall, where he was spotted by agents casting for the David Puttnam film War Of The Buttons (pictured in 2018)
‘I haven’t even thought about drinking since my mother passed away. Drinking is not the way forward for me at all,’ he said. ‘I never even drank till I was 25 anyway. I was in Thailand on my own, filming. I was a little bit lonely and I started drinking.’
‘Since I was 27 I must have drunk maybe a dozen-and-a-half times – but when I do, I’m like Bambi. I’m all over the place, hopeless, like a 16-year-old kid. People notice.’
‘Now drink doesn’t fit into where I want to go. I want to do something useful with my life. Drinking is not synonymous with that. And I don’t put any emphasis on it.
‘To be honest, I just leave it alone and hope people will, too, but I don’t really care. The whole drinking thing with me has been blown out of all proportion anyway.
He added that the public’s perception of him is all wrong:
‘I kind of like people having this idea that I’m this wild, rebellious guy. But the reality is that I’m not, and I’m not quite sure I want to reveal how boring my life is. Of course, as a young Irish actor you’re tarred before you start. It’s the enduring cliché.’
In May 2019 the actor and his family ignited controversy when they travelled on a plane with an estimated 5,000 cannabis plants in May alongside Greek Coca Cola heir Alki David – who was later arrested on drugs charges.
The billionaire was taken into custody shortly after travelling to the Caribbean country with Rhys Meyers and his family on a private jet containing an estimated £1.3million worth of cannabis.
Local authorities swooped on David and his business partner Chase Ergen following their arrival at Robert L. Bradshaw International airport.
They had transported an estimated 5,000 cannabis plants on the aircraft as part of their new business to ‘develop legal cannabis businesses in the region’.
David and Ergen were pulled aside by customs officials after landing and ‘held for eight hours’ before being let go and then arrested as they tried to leave the island days later.
Candid: In July 2018, Rhys Meyers said: ‘There’s never an excuse for me to drink. But sometimes there are triggers that make you more vulnerable. I’ve relearnt that vulnerability and it’s now fresh in my mind again’ (pictured in July 2018)
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