But can't the individuals he had wanted to apologize now argue they were right about what's inside him?
Gibson said he didn't know if a person could say anti-Semitic and intolerant things and not be anti-Semitic and intolerant.
"I don't know the answer to that question. Because one changes from day to day. And there are different forces exercised on you. … And people every day say things they don't mean. And things they don't feel. They may feel them temporarily. I mean we're … we're all broken," he said.
Gibson said he was now learning more about those who were hearing his words in an earlier apology. He asked the Jewish community for dialogue and help.
"I heard back that a woman who had read the apology actually wept with relief," he said. "Now, that sort of hit me. I was like, 'Relief? Oh, my God. She was afraid. She was terrified.'"
"I don't think I realized until like a couple of … four days later, five days later, that what I did was press a big fear button," Gibson said. "I didn't realize the level of fear that … that was there."
"It was just the stupid ramblings of a drunkard, you know, and I guess I had to sort of think, well, hang on. It's conceivable that they think I can be the next … uh, goose-stepping maniac to come into their neighborhood," he said.
But for several years, there has been one other question that has plagued him: the fact that his father has famously publicly expressed doubts that 6 million Jews were really murdered in the Holocaust.
Three years ago in an interview, Gibson told ABC News that he believed 6 million Jews were murdered.
But when asked to repudiate the assertions of his father, he declined.
"He's my father. Gotta leave it alone, Diane. Gotta leave it alone," Gibson said during that interview.
The last time we went down this road, Sawyer said, "Yeah, I bit your head off," Gibson replied.
But Gibson's father has gone on the record saying that the Holocaust is "mostly fiction."
"We're talking about me right now. And me taking responsibility for my words and actions. And … I'm certainly not going to use him, to sort of put anything off of me," he said. "It isn't the explanation for what happened that night. It isn't. It has nothing to do with it. … That's in my own heart."
