Mel Gibson poses for selfies with fans to mark 30 years of Braveheart film
Fans travelled from all over Ireland to get a chance of meeting the Oscar-winning actor and director, who starred as the Scottish hero in the historical epic.
The film was mostly shot in Ireland – despite the story being set in Scotland – after the Irish government lobbied and offered to supply 1,600 army reserves as extras.
People queued at Trim Castle Hotel to meet Gibson and other Braveheart cast members.
The event was held as part of the local King John Summer Prom festival, with proceeds raised for the Irish Equity Support Fund.
Maksim Okhotnikov, eight, dressed up as Braveheart hero William Wallace in a costume created by his mother, who also sketched a charcoal drawing of Gibson.
'I didn't watch all of the film, I just watched pieces because it's (rated) 16+,' Maksim told the PA news agency.
Asked what he likes about the film, he said: 'I like himself'.
Adam Walker and his son, Nathan, seven, from Dublin, were among the first people into the room to meet the cast.
'Obviously he's too young to watch the full movie, so I was trying to show him the quotes, the big freedom speech at the end of the movie. We were watching that, we were watching the mad Irishman of course: David O'Hara who plays Stephen of Ireland,' Mr Walker told PA.
'We were at the Q&A yesterday and a lot of the lads pointed out that the actors said the thing that it did was it really changed things, Ireland seemed to really latch onto it, there was a lot of similarities between the Irish and the Scottish, but it seemed to call out to everybody.
'We were looking for a wedding venue 12 years back and we were looking everywhere and we found here, it was lovely, the prices were great, and then I read at the end the castle was where Braveheart was filmed.
'I said to my wife 'we're doing it' so we got married in the room just there and we had the castle as the backdrop.
'So it's very interesting to be able to come back 12 years later and actually meet Mel Gibson here, and this little lad wasn't even alive at the time.'
Elaine Coyle, who travelled with her mother from Dublin, said watching Braveheart was a family tradition.
'My dad would be a big fan, it's what we grew up with. It's a Christmas tradition in our house,' she said.
She said of the film: 'You can relate to it as an Irish person a little bit too, it's iconic.
'It definitely opened the door to the Irish economy around films, it completely changed how the industry worked going forward, but I think in general people recognise that it made such an impact on Ireland, and we can also relate to the history of it. It's generational.'
Cousins Eileen Shields and Anita McGrath travelled from Galway at 6am to meet the star.
They said they are fans of Gibson's films Lethal Weapon and Daddy's Home 2.
'He has a wicked wink in his eye,' Eileen Shields said.
'It was lovely to meet him, short and sweet but it's nice to have the opportunity.
'Hopefully we see a lot more of him in Ireland. You know his family are from Longford, he was named after St Mel's Cathedral.'
Anita McGrath said: 'I crocheted a shamrock for him, for good luck, so I gave it to him and he said 'thanks very much'. Just something different.'
Ms Shields added: 'He wiped his brow with it.'
Sevinc Ozogul, who lives across the road from the hotel, said she was excited to see the castle from Braveheart when she moved to Trim.
She said Gibson is also one of her favourite actors, adding: 'I was so excited to see him.'
She added: 'He was a bit tired but he looks great.'
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BONO Apart from the attack on the Nova music festival on October 7th, which felt like it happened while U2 were on stage at Sphere Las Vegas, I have generally tried to stay out of the politics of the Middle East… this was not humility, more uncertainty in the face of obvious complexity… I have over recent months written about the war in Gaza in The Atlantic and spoken about it in The Observer, but I circled the subject. As a cofounder of the ONE campaign, which tackles AIDS and extreme poverty in Africa, I felt my experience should be on the catastrophes facing that work and that part of the world. The hemorrhaging of human life in Sudan or Ethiopia hardly makes the news. Sudan alone is beyond comprehension, with a civil war that has left 150,000 dead and 2 million people facing famine. 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And disappear it from membership in a community of nations built around even a flawed decency? As someone who has long believed in Israel's right to exist and supported a two-state solution, I want to make clear to anyone who cares to listen our band's condemnation of Netanyahu's immoral actions and join all who have called for a cessation of hostilities on both sides. If not Irish voices, please please please stop and listen to Jewish ones - from the high mindedness of Rabbi Sharon Brous, to the tearful comedy of the Grody-Patinkin family - who fear the damage to Judaism, as well as Israel's neighbours. Listen to the more than 100,000 Israelis who this week protested for an end to the war. Our band stands in solidarity with the people of Palestine who truly seek a path to peace and coexistence with Israel and with their rightful and legitimate demand for statehood. We stand in solidarity with the remaining hostages and plead that someone rational negotiate their release. 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I have three questions for Prime Minister Netanyahu. I ask them in the hope of engaging the conscience and sanity of the people of Israel. First: Do you truly believe that such devastation—inflicted so intentionally and relentlessly on a civilian population—can happen without heaping generational shame upon those responsible? Do you not see that the longer this continues, the more Israel risks becoming isolated, mistrusted, and remembered not as a haven from persecution, but as a state that, when provoked, systematically persecuted a neighbouring civilian population? Second: If the end goal is, as the Likud platform suggests, the removal of Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank to make way for a 'Greater Israel,' then that is not peace—it is dispossession; it is ethnic cleansing, and, according to many legal scholars, colonial genocide. It is an injustice on a massive scale. And injustice, as we learned in Ireland, is never the path to security: it breeds resentment, it hardens hearts, and it guarantees that future generations will inherit conflict rather than peace. The oppressed do not forget. How can this course of action possibly make your people safer? Third: If you reject the two-state solution—as your government now openly does—then what is your political vision? Simply perpetual conflict? A future of walls, blockades, military occupation? A state of permanent inequality? And if this apartheid state transpires don't you destroy the very argument for Israel's existence as a moral response to the horrors of the Holocaust? For if Israel comes to be seen as a state that systematically denies another people their rights, then the world will inevitably ask whether the only just and sustainable future, the only tolerable future, is a shared state—one where Jews and Palestinians live together as equals under the law. We know from our own experience in Ireland that peace is not made through is made when people sit down with their opponents—when they recognise the equal dignity of all, even those they once feared or despised. There can be no peace without justice. No reconciliation without recognition. And no future unless we refuse to let the past be repeated. The road to peace is difficult. But it is never too late, or too early, to begin walking it. Adam Clayton The humanitarian crisis in Gaza caused by Israel's aid blockade and bombing looks like revenge on a civilian population who are not responsible for Hamas' murderous attack on October 7. If Israel moves to colonise the Gaza Strip, it will permanently undo any possibility of lasting peace or solution for hostilities. Forgetting the morality of the situation for a moment, doesn't the technical superiority of Israel's modern army make a boast of its precision targeting of individuals from thousands of miles away? And if so why are the IDF bombarding a civilian population from the skies indiscriminately destroying any bit of shelter and infrastructure? Preserving civilian life is a choice in this war. Larry Mullen Jr. The images of the Hamas-led massacre of Israelis on October 7th and in particular the footage of innocent music fans being slaughtered, beaten and abused at the Nova Music Festival were harrowing to watch. Nothing was achieved except more misery for the region at the hands of Hamas and its allies. So what did Hamas expect would happen when they committed mass murder and took the hostages? Israel's response was those attacks the total obliteration of Hamas was called for by Israel and its allies and was expected.A ground war was bombardment and destruction were expected. The indiscriminate decimation of most homes and hospitals in Gaza, with a majority of those killed being women and children, was not famine was not expected. It's difficult to comprehend how any civilised society can think starving children is going to further any cause and be justified as an acceptable response to another horror. To state the obvious, starving innocent civilians as a weapon of war is inhumane and criminal. Where is the outrage from within Israel, outside of a small, if increasingly vocal, minority?Where is the outrage from the diaspora?Beyond some reluctant and muted acknowledgement of a famine inflicted, power to change this obscenity is in the hands of IsraelI undoubtedly support Israel's right to exist and I also believe Palestinians deserve the same right and a state of their serves none of us. Israel has been accused of carrying out genocidal acts during the ongoing war in Gaza by numerous organisations, including the UN Human Rights Council. 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