It’s a given that Mel Gibson’s reputation is now in tatters.
But Winona Ryder says the fallen Oscar-winner first revealed his true colors to her back in his “Braveheart” days, and no one believed her when she said he was bigoted back then.
Nearly a decade before Gibson was first publicly shamed over vile remarks about Jews and women in a drunk-driving arrest – and way before Gibson’s leaked-tape drama with Oksana Grigorieva – Ryder said the star weirded her out at a party in 1995.
"I remember, like, fifteen years ago, I was at one of those big Hollywood parties. And he was really drunk,” Ryder recalled in an interview with GQ. “I was with my friend, who's gay. He made a really horrible gay joke.”
The “Black Swan” actress said when it "somehow it came up" she was Jewish, Gibson said "something about 'oven dodgers,' but I didn't get it.”
“I'd never heard that before,” Ryder told GQ. “It was just this weird, weird moment. I was like, 'He's anti-Semitic and he's homophobic.' No one believed me!”
Gibson's rep, when contacted by People mag, declined to comment.
U.S. & World
Check out Ryder's full GQ interview to see how she fumbles when asked about the incident that tarnished her own reputation and put her career on the skids -- getting busted in 2001 for shoplifting at Saks Fifth Avenue in Beverly Hills.