Swayze joins Jodie Foster in defending Mel Gibson

Patrick Swayze (left) and Mel Gibson

LONDON - Patrick Swayze became the latest actor to defend Mel Gibson, saying today his friend was not anti-Semitic and that too much had been made of his controversial outburst blaming Jews for starting all wars.

Gibson's widely reported remarks, made to a sheriff's deputy when drunk last month on the Californian Coast, have divided Hollywood, with several film executives criticising the star and one actor vowing he would never work with him.

But in an interview on British television, Swayze joined actress Jodie Foster in urging people to be more understanding.

"I feel really bad for Mel," Swayze told GMTV. "He's a good guy, we have been in each other's lives for a long time.

"He is not anti-Semitic. People say stupid things when they happen to have a few (drinks), and especially if you don't drink anymore, or have limited your drinking for a long time.

"Everybody else gets to be allowed to have a stupid moment and nobody knows about it or cares the next day," he said. "So it makes it difficult when your life is under the microscope."

Foster has also came out in Gibson's defence.

"Someone told me what had happened, and I said, 'That is just so not true'," she was quoted as saying in the Los Angeles Times last week.

"Is he an anti-Semite? Absolutely not," Foster said. "But it's no secret that he has always fought a terrible battle with alcoholism. I just wish I had been there, that I had been able to say, 'Don't do it. Don't take that drink'."

Asked if he thought Gibson's career had effectively been ended by his remarks, Swayze said: "No way, are you kidding me? A man that talented? You don't put somebody down like that, you can try -- they've tried in my world."

Gibson, who holds strong conservative Catholic religious and political views and whose father is a Holocaust denier, has apologised for the outburst and entered a rehabilitation programme to treat alcoholism.

- REUTERS