Winona Ryder says that she was a victim of Mel Gibson’s alleged anti-semitism years before it made global headlines. The actress who is making her big screen comeback with the Academy Award nominated film Black Swan after almost a decade-long hiatus, said that Gibson made a crude joke about her Jewish roots at a party 15 years ago, in an interview to GQ magazine.
“I remember, like, fifteen years ago, I was at one of those big Hollywood parties. And Mel was really drunk. I was with my friend, who’s gay. He made a really horrible gay joke. And somehow it came up that I was Jewish. He said something about ‘oven dodgers’,” recalled the actress.
The derogatory term refers to the cremation of Jews in concentration camps during the Holocaust.
“I’d never heard that before. It was just this weird, weird moment. I was like, ‘He’s anti-Semitic and he’s homophobic’. No one believed me,” she added.
Gibson has been at the centre of multiple racist diatribes since then and is now facing charges of domestic violence from ex-girlfriend Oksana Grigorieva.