(Jewish Group) Winona Ryder opens up about her experience with anti-Semitism in Hollywood
Actress Winona Ryder said she was passed over for a movie role because the studio head thought she looked too Jewish and Mel Gibson once asked her if she was an oven dodger.
Ryder talked about her experiences with anti-Semitism in Hollywood as part of wide-ranging interview published in the London-based Sunday Times.
There was a movie that I was up for a long time ago, it was a period piece, and the studio head, who was Jewish, said I looked too Jewish to be in a blue-blooded family, Ryder told newspaper.
The incident with Gibson, at a party in 1995, was first reported in an interview in GQ in 2010. Ryder said that when something came up in the conversation about Jews, the actor-director said, Youre not an oven dodger, are you?' a reference to the ovens that creamated the bodies of inmates in Nazi extermination camps. She added that Gibson later tried to apologize for the remark.
Ryder was born Winona Laura Horowitz in Winona, Minnesota.
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