Jewish actress Winona Ryder has recalled her shock at Mel Gibson once calling her an ‘oven dodger’ at a party. The Black Swan star says she was horrified to run into Mad Max star Mel at a Hollywood party and hear his vile ‘anti-Semitic and homophobic’ slurs. She recalled her horror at his words – insisting his behaviour over the last few years leaves her feeling vindicated as no one previously believed he would have said such horrible things to her. Winona says Mel made a nasty homophobic joke in front of her gay friend – and then called her an ‘oven-dodger’, which she only later realised was a reference to the mass killing of Jews in gas chambers during the Holocaust. “I remember, like, fifteen years ago, I was at one of those big Hollywood parties. And he was really drunk,” Ryder tells GQ magazine in the US. “I was with my friend, who is gay. He [Gibson] 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. I had never heard that before. “It was this weird, weird moment. “I was like, ‘He’s anti-Semitic and he’s homophobic.’ No one believed me!” A spokesperson for Gibson did not respond to calls for comment.
