LOS ANGELES (AFP) — Jodie Foster has defended scandal-dogged US actor Mel Gibson ahead of his return to the silver screen after several years lying low, saying he is a “sensitive” man with a “lifetime of pain.”

“God, I love that man,” Foster, who directs and co-stars with fellow Oscar-winner Gibson in their upcoming movie The Beaver, told industry daily the Hollywood Reporter.

“He brought a lifetime of pain to the character that we’ve been talking about for years, that I knew was part of his psyche and who he is. It’s part of him that is beautiful and that I want people to know, too,” she added.

Gibson’s career has struggled since his 2006 arrest for drunk driving, which exploded into a major scandal because of anti-Semitic remarks he made to a highway patrol officer.

Last week he was ordered to follow a one-year domestic violence counselling programme, and serve three years of probation, in a plea bargain to avoid jail over the alleged abuse of his ex-partner.

The star of Braveheart — for which Gibson won two Oscars in 1996 — had no starring role on the big screen from 2005 until last year’s thriller Edge of Darkness.

In The Beaver, he plays a troubled husband and executive who adopts a beaver hand-puppet as his sole means of communicating.

Gibson has agreed to do the publicity rounds for the movie, which hits US theatres in May — putting himself in front of journalists who are likely to ask him questions about the past few years.

“He was like, ‘I’ll be chained to a car and dragged through gravel for you!’ Foster said. “And I’m like, ‘That’s OK!'”

“He’s so incredibly loving and sensitive, he really is,” the notoriously private Foster said in one of her most candid interviews in years.

“He is the most loved actor I have ever worked with on a movie. And he’s not saintly, and he’s got a big mouth, and he’ll do gross things your nephew would do. But I knew the minute I met him that I would love him the rest of my life.”