Winona Ryder: Gibson called me 'oven dodger'

Winona Ryder. 'No one believed me'














Jewish actress recounts anti-Semitic run-in with filmmaker at Hollywood party 15 years ago

In a recent issue of GQ magazine, Jewish actress Winona Ryder discusses an anti-Semitic run-in she had with Mel Gibson some 15 years ago at a Hollywood party.

She told the magazine: “I was at one of those big Hollywood parties. And he (Gibson) 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,’ but I didn't get it.”

Ryder told the magazine that she had never heard that term before.

“It was just this weird, weird moment. I was like, ‘He's anti-Semitic and he's homophobic.’ No one believed me!”

Since that time, and indeed only in more recent months, Gibson has been ridiculed for several other bigoted and racist diatribes.

Ryder currently stars in a supporting role as an aging prima ballerina replaced by Natalie Portman’s character in the motion picture “Black Swan.”