Courtney Love Says Gibson Helped Her Get Sober

(November 1, 2006) — Courtney Love, who has been sober for 15 months, says Mel Gibson helped her on the road to recovery. Love, the former leader of the band Hole and widow of Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain, said Gibson had showed up at a Beverly Hills, Calif., hotel room while she was doing drugs with several men.

“Mel kept coming to the door with this cheesy grin going, `Hi!’” Love said in an interview with Diane Sawyer that aired Tuesday on ABC’s “Good Morning America.”

“I just kept looking at him going I can’t cuss um, `Blank off!’ … I know him and he’s a nice guy. It didn’t matter who it was. It could have been Jesus. I didn’t care,” the 42-year-old rocker-actress said.

Love said Gibson, accompanied by addiction counselor Warren Boyd, left with the men “to have a cheeseburger” while Boyd talked to her about seeking treatment.

It wasn’t clear when Gibson had intervened. The Associated Press sent e-mails Wednesday to Alan Nierob, publicist for both Love and Gibson, asking for details.

Gibson sought treatment for alcoholism following his drunken-driving arrest and his rant at a police officer in late July. The 50-year-old actor-director starred in the “Lethal Weapons” movies and directed 2004’s “The Passion of the Christ.”

In September 2005, Love was sentenced to 180 days at a drug treatment facility for violating probation in three criminal cases. In February, she had pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor assault charge and was sentenced to three years’ probation. She was already on probation in two unrelated drug cases.

Love has written a memoir, “Dirty Blonde: The Diaries of Courtney Love,” and says she is practicing Buddhism.

She also said her 14-year-old daughter, Frances Bean Cobain, is “fantastic” and doing well in school. “She didn’t see me on drugs very often once or twice, maximum,” she told Sawyer.

Love has appeared in films such as “Man on the Moon” and “The People vs. Larry Flynt.”