Last month, we reported that Hollywood star Mel Gibson had been accused of making anti-semitic comments to actress Winona Ryder.

Now, his former Mad Max co-star Joanne Samuels is rushing to Gibson’s defense.

Samuels, 62, told The Daily Telegraph that she is taking these allegations against Gibson with a “grain of salt because I know what he is like.”

“He is a loyal, wonderful, very generous, talented, creative, and great guy,” added Samuels, who has been friends with Gibson for over forty years.

“He is like you or anybody else,” she continued.

“He has his good side, and he struggles with different things, but not all of us have cameras and people running around after us everywhere to capture that stuff and make of it what they will.'”

“I know him as a good friend,” Samuels concluded.

“He is such a generous man and a lovely person.”

This comes after Ryder accused Gibson of hurling an anti-semitic remark at her back in the 1990s.

“We were at a crowded party with one of my good friends, and Mel Gibson was smoking a cigar,” said Ryder, adding that something then came up about her Jewish faith. That’s when Gibson allegedly said, “You’re not an oven dodger, are you?”

“Oven dodger” is an extremely offensive term for the way Jewish people were killed at Nazi concentration camps during World War II.

Gibson immediately denied Ryder’s allegation through his representative.

“This is 100% untrue,” his representative told TooFab.

“She lied about it over a decade ago, when she talked to the press, and she’s lying about it now. Also, she lied about him trying to apologize to her back then. He did reach out to her, many years ago, to confront her about her lies and she refused to address it with him.”

Ryder, however, stood by her story.

“I believe in redemption and forgiveness and hope that Mr. Gibson has found a healthy way to deal with his demons, but I am not one of them,” she told Fox News.

Around 1996, my friend Kevyn Aucoin and I were on the receiving end of his hateful words.

It is a painful and vivid memory for me.  Only by accepting responsibility for our behavior in this life, can we make amends and truly respect each other, and I wish him well on this lifelong journey.”

This piece originally appeared in UpliftingToday.com and is used by permission.

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Mel Gibson Is Fired From Movie After Winona Ryder Accuses Him of Calling Her a Jewish ‘Oven Dodger’
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