DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES - LESLIE ANN WARREN: 'I'M JEWISH'

DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES star LESLEY ANN WARREN jumped at the chance to play a Yiddish wife in new movie comedy WHEN DO WE EAT? so she can reveal to fans she's Jewish herself. The actress plays the matriarch of a dysfunctional family celebrating the beginning of Passover in the film, and it gave her the chance to represent her religion for the first time. Many friends were baffled when she first revealed she was fighting for the role of PEGGY STUCKMAN - before she revealed her Jewish family background. She says, "I never kept it a secret but everybody's surprised that I'm Jewish. I think that's because I moved away from practicing the Jewish religion, per se, when I was around 14 or 15. It was never part of my conversation. "People somehow don't physically assume that I am Jewish, but I was bat mizvahed when I was 13 and my brother had a bar mitzvah. My brother is very committed to practicing the Jewish religion and bringing up his daughters that way. "My dad changed his name from WARRENOFF to Warren so I was born Lesley Ann Warren. We're Russian Jews on both sides of my parents' family. When I was very little my grandmother and my great grandmother migrated to Montreal from Russia."