The Offensive Remark Winona Ryder Says She Heard From Mel Gibson
Winona Ryder has been in entertainment since she was a teen. She scored her first role at 15 in the drama, "Lucas." Two years later, she landed a lead in Tim Burton's "Beetlejuice," followed by another Burton flick, "Edward Scissorhands," in which she collaborated with her first big love, Johnny Depp. Ryder's parents had worried about her becoming a child star. "They'd heard all the Judy Garland stories," she told GQ. They were protective and insisted on chaperoning their daughter on and off the film set at all times.
However, she still got into her fair share of scrapes, including an infamous shoplifting incident and a DUI. According to documents obtained by The Smoking Gun, after pulling her over, cops discovered Ryder's purse contained "a syringe, bottles of Demerol and diazepam, six Valiums, forty Vicoprofens, two Vicodins, two Percocets, a Percodan, and a morphine-sulfate capsule."
She has also been forced to suffer ignorance and bigotry over the years. "There are times when people have said, 'Wait, you're Jewish? But you're so pretty!'" she told The Sunday Times. Ryder also shared that a Jewish studio head once insisted she "looked 'too Jewish' to be in a blue-blooded family." Given her past experiences, you'd think Ryder would have been unshockable. However, that's not the case at all because the offensive remark Ryder says she heard from Mel Gibson was jaw-dropping — and it contributed to him becoming one of the stars who have been shunned by Hollywood.
Mel Gibson's offensive remarks and legal woes made him a Hollywood pariah
Winona Ryder wasn't the first in Hollywood to get a direct glimpse into the double life of Mel Gibson — which wasn't a pretty sight. "We were at a crowded party with one of my good friends, and Mel Gibson was smoking a cigar, and we're all talking, and he said to my friend, who's gay, 'Oh wait, am I gonna get AIDS?'" Ryder told The Sunday Times, recounting a story she's told in the past. "And then something came up about Jews, and he said, 'You're not an oven dodger, are you?'" Ryder shared that Gibson later attempted to apologize for his comments, but there's no coming back from there.
She initially spilled the Gibson tea in 2010 while recounting "embarrassing stories about famous people who deserve to have embarrassing stories told about them" to GQ. Ryder explained Gibson had been "really drunk" and then relayed the gay comment and oven "quip," admitting she hadn't initially understood what he was talking about. "It was just this weird, weird moment," she continued. "I was like, 'He's anti-Semitic, and he's homophobic.' No one believed me!"
Well, it wouldn't take long before that changed. For a hot minute, Gibson became one of the stars who have been blackballed by Hollywood. He went from movie headliner to tabloid headliner in the blink of an eye following a series of horrendous anti-Semitic and misogynistic incidents and legal woes.
Mel Gibson went through some deeply troubling times
Mel Gibson was hit by a tsunami of anti-Semetic accusations following the release of "The Passion of The Christ" in 2004. "Mel Gibson has shown nothing but antagonism and disrespect to Jews," Simon Wiesenthal Center Los Angeles founder Rabbi Marvin Hier told The Hollywood Reporter. "[Those Jews] who did not accept Christ were all portrayed as idiots, buffoons or people who were tyrants, with a very unfair portrayal."
Then came Gibson's despicable DUI scandal in 2006. TMZ obtained the arrest report in which Gibson calls the female arresting officer "sugar tits" before engaging in an anti-Semetic tirade. "F*****g Jews... The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world," he rages, asking the deputy cop, "Are you a Jew?" He subsequently apologized in a press statement.
Later that year, Gibson's image was tarnished yet further when voicemails were leaked to RadarOnline of the actor making "30 terrorizing telephone calls to [Oksana Grigorieva] in 24 hours" after she broke off their three-year relationship. "The rantings are a twisted mix of more misogynistic insults and rage," the website reports. "Mel again ripped into the mother of his illegitimate child, at one stage labeling her 'f***ing disloyal and f***ing weak' and 'such a f***ing sl*t.'" Hollywood hotshot Ari Emanuel called for a Gibson boycott in a Huffington Post op-ed. It was back to business as usual for Gibson after Jodie Foster cast her longtime friend in 2011's "The Beaver."