Winona Ryder is opening up about negative experiences on-set. The actor, who is Jewish, tells The Sunday Times, that she was once told she looked “too Jewish” for a movie role.
She said: “There are times when people have said, ‘Wait, you’re Jewish? But you’re so pretty!’ 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 stars in The Plot Against America, on HBO, a miniseries adaptation of Philip Roth’s novel of the same name, which looks at America as if Hitler won the war.
She also spoke out about other unpleasantness on-set, including her treatment on the 1992 set of Francis Ford Coppola’s Dracula. Coppola wanted her to cry, and she revealed that he wanted her co-star Keanu Reeves to abuse her in a bid for tears.
During a scene involving Gary Oldman’s Dracula transforming into a pile of rats, the director shouted, “You whore!” off-set to get her to cry.
“To put it in context I’m supposed to be crying. Literally, Richard E Grant, Anthony Hopkins, Keanu … Francis was trying to get all of them to yell things that would make me cry. But Keanu wouldn’t, Anthony wouldn’t … It just didn’t work. I was, like, really? It kind of did the opposite.”
Ryder added that she and Coppola are “good now,” but that the experience cemented her bond with Reeves.