RACHEL: And my nose looks like it's … just a really outsized nose, you know.
EMMA: But, you see, you're holding back from saying what you said at the store, which was that you thought you looked too Jewish. Is it limiting as an actress to be perceived as being too ethnic in any way?
RACHEL: Well, I think you and I have always felt the same way — that we're Jewish but we can get away with just being exotic. We're kind of Jews in disguise. Those cultural stereotypes about the Jew with the big hooky nose and the fleshy face rub off on you. That's terrible to admit, isn't it.
EMMA: Well, it's that Jackie Mason joke about how no Jewish woman wants to look Jewish: "'You think I look maybe a little Italian, I look a little Russian, perhaps I can be Spanish?' … 'You look Jewish!'"
RACHEL: Hollywood's run by Jews. I was advised by an American agent when I was about 19 to change my surname. And I said "Why? Jews run Hollywood." He said "Exactly." He had a theory that all the executives think acting's a job for shiksas.
EMMA: Of all the self-loathing Jews in the world, the most self-loathing are the Hollywood Jews. They don't want to see images of themselves on screen. That's why Lauren Bacall had to hide her identity, and Winona Ryder changed her name from Horowitz.
RACHEL: In some way acting is prostitution, and Hollywood Jews don't want their own women to participate. Also, there's an element of Portnoy's Complaint — they all fancy Aryan blondes.
EMMA: For Beautiful Creatures, in which you play a battered woman and trophy girlfriend, you had to go blonde. You're such an über-brunette; did you find you lost your sense of self?
RACHEL: Completely. The last day of shooting, I went home to see my father and stepmother. She rang me the next day and said, "I never want to see that girl ever again. The girl who came to our house was like a horrendous, vulgar Spice Girl."