Emmy Rossum spoke out after Winona Ryder accused Mel Gibson of making anti-Semitic comments.
By Lauren Marcus, World Israel News
Jewish actress Emmy Rossum weighed in about the anti-Semitism she’s faced in Hollywood earlier this week.
Rossum’s comments came on the heels of Winona Ryder’s recent interview with the Sunday Times, in which she revealed that Mel Gibson had referenced her Jewish looks and asked if she was an “oven dodger.”
“On multiple occasions I’ve had people — both in the industry and not — be surprised to learn that I’m Jewish. They usually react with “Oh! Wow. You don’t really LOOK Jewish,’” Rossum wrote on Twitter.
“And when I offer no response and let the statement linger they continue with some kind of defensive qualifier like ‘I mean that in a GOOD way! As if ‘looking Jewish’ — whatever that means to them — is something I should want to avoid. This makes me sick.”
The Phantom of the Opera star continued, “This stirred up a lot for me in a time when I’m already pretty stirred. It’s disgusting. It’s sad. And yet not a surprising or unique experience of the white supremacy and bigotry that pervades our country and industry at all.”
Gibson denies Ryder’s account, calling it “100% untrue.”
He told Variety, “She lied about it over a decade ago, when she talked to the press, and she’s lying about it now.”
Rossum, a vocal Hillary Clinton supporter, revealed on Twitter that she was bombarded with anti-Semitic harassment after President Trump’s election victory in November 2016.
“Trump supporters are sending me messages threatening to send me & my ‘ilk’ to the gas chambers & writing hashtags like ‘#sieg hiel’. NOT OK,” she tweeted.
“Telling anyone to ‘get ready for the trains’ in reference to WWII is disgusting & offensive. Reporting you to twitter is not enough. Back off.”
She then posted a screenshot of one of the messages, which included an image of a concentration camp at the end of a railroad with “Trump” written on the camp’s walls.
“This doesn’t scare me,” wrote Rossum. “It doesn’t cause me nightmares.”
“I find it sad to recognize that this kind of vicious underbelly was there all along.”