Halle Berry has learned the hard way that off-the-cuff ethnic jokes don't play in Peoria. The swelling-bellied beauty is doing damage control after a comic bit went awry during her appearance last week on "The Tonight Show With Jay Leno."

Berry, who's out promoting the unfortunately titled "Things We Lost in the Fire," was showing off how she spends her free time, which strangely involves warping her perfect features with Mac's Photo Booth program (hmmm, could this have been a product plug gone awry, as well?).

"The machine morphs your face to look like all these silly other people," she explained. "And whenever I'm feeling really down about the world I do this and crack myself up."

Halle then proceeded to point out a pic that featured her with a schnoz that would make W.C. Fields wince in sympathy, and she opined that she looked like "my Jewish cousin."

D'oh! And oy.

As crickets chirped in the crowd, Leno tried to cut the tension by quipping, "I'm glad you said it. OK, great ..."

The actress, who is nearly five months pregnant with the spawn of model Gabriel Aubry, quickly clued in to the un-PC-ness of her remark and worryingly asked, "Oh my God, have I just like ruined my career?"

Jay assured her she had not, and the powers-that-be at NBC mitigated her mistake by cutting the word "Jewish" from the broadcast, throwing in some canned laughter instead.

Also helping to defuse the situation was Halle's quick and seemingly sincere mea culpa.

"I so didn't mean to offend anybody -- and after the show I realized it could be seen as offensive, so I asked Jay to take it out, and he did," a "near tears" Berry told the New York Post.

Too bad she didn't stop there. Instead, she rambled on, citing the influence of one of her Bat Mitzvah-celebrating minions for the gaffe.

"What happened was I was backstage before the show and I have three girls who are Jewish who work for me," she explained to the paper. "We were going through pictures to see which ones looked silly, and one of my Jewish friends said [of the honker snapshot], 'That could be your Jewish cousin!' And I guess it was fresh in my mind, and it just came out of my mouth. But I didn't mean to offend anybody. I didn't. I didn't mean any harm."

Concluded the repentant Berry, "It was just a lighthearted segment that was meant to make fun of myself. There was a picture where I said I looked like Monica Lewinsky and one where I said I looked like Jay. It was just supposed to be a silly segment. I am so sorry, and I apologize."

No word on whether she also plans to apologize to Lewinsky for implying that she could be her horribly distorted twin.

So far, there has been little fallout from the flub, and even the Anti-Defamation League has accepted Berry's apology and moved on.

"The comments were unfortunate," the group's rep tells Radar. "She's since apologized. She understood she was offensive."

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