Jewish newspapers in the 1930s and 1940s featured a column called “Our Film Folk,” revealing to the delight of the readership that many of the Hollywood glitterati they loved were, in fact, fellow members of the Hebrew faith. A new version of”Our Film Folk” circulates these days in conversation, if not in print, among Americans of the conservative faith. The starboard leanings of Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger are long-established fact. But not until this summer did the doyens of the right discover they had a friend in Mel Gibson.

Mel Gibson! Once the Sexiest Man Alive, now among the five actors who can command $ 20 million a picture, he is that oxymoron in Hollywood, if nowhere else — to a limousine conservative. This 39-year-old producer/director — a father of six with his wife of 15 years — has opposed gun control, called President Clinton a “low level opportunist,” got involved in a public campaign against the regulatory powers of the Food and Drug Administration, railed about the weakening of his beloved Catholic Church, and uttered heresies like “feminists don’t like me and I don’t like them. I don’t get their point.”