Mary Debra Winger is an American actress and producer.
She gained critical acclaim for her performance in Urban Cowboy in 1980.
She then gave Academy Award-nominated performances in An Officer and a Gentleman, Terms of Endearment,
and Shadowlands.
She has been nominated for four Golden Globe awards, two BAFTA awards, an Emmy Award, and
won the National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Actress for Terms of Endearment and
the Tokyo International Film Festival Award for Best Actress for A Dangerous Woman.
She was also an executive producer of the Academy Award-nominated documentary Gasland.
Early years Winger was born as Mary Debra Winger in Cleveland
Heights, Ohio, into an Orthodox Jewish family, to Robert Winger, a meat packer, and Ruth,
an office manager.
She has stated publicly and with amusement that the Internet has a growing "snowball"
of claims that she had volunteered on an Israeli kibbutz, whereas she was merely on a typical
Israeli youth program that visited the kibbutz.
After returning to the United States, she was involved in a car accident and suffered
a cerebral hemorrhage; as a result, she was left partially paralyzed and blind for ten
months, having initially been told that she would never see again.
With time on her hands to think about her life, she decided that, if she recovered,
she would move to California and become an actress.
Career Acting
Winger's first acting role was as "Debbie" in the 1976 sexploitation film Slumber Party
'57.
Her next role was as Diana Prince's younger sister Drusilla in three episodes of ABC's
TV series, Wonder Woman.
This was followed by a guest role in Season 4 of the TV drama Police Woman in 1978.
Her first starring role was in Thank God It's Friday, followed by her performance in Urban
Cowboy in 1980 with John Travolta, for which she received a BAFTA nomination and a pair
of Golden Globe nominations.
In 1982 she co-starred with Nick Nolte in Cannery Row and with Richard Gere in An Officer
and a Gentleman, for which she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress.
She was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress twice more: for Terms of Endearment
in 1983 and for Shadowlands in 1993 for which she also received her second BAFTA nomination.
Her performance in A Dangerous Woman earned a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress.
Over the years Winger acquired a reputation for being outspoken and sometimes difficult
to work with.
She has expressed her dislike of An Officer and a Gentleman, for which she refused to
do any publicity, and several other of her films, and has been dismissive of some of
her co-stars and directors.
Commenting on her past attitudes, Winger said in 2009, "Most bad behavior comes from insecurity.
Even though I loved what I was doing, I didn't always know I could pull it off.
I took [my insecurities out] on everybody.
But in my defense, I never fought about the size of my trailer or things like that; it
was always about the work".
When Barbara Walters interviewed Bette Davis in 1986, Davis said "I see a great deal of
myself in Debra Winger."
Winger was cast in the lead role in A League of their Own but dropped out and was replaced
by Geena Davis.
It was later reported that the main reason Winger chose to leave the film was her refusal
to work with singer/actress Madonna.
Other starring roles during this period included Legal Eagles, Made in Heaven, Everybody Wins,
The Sheltering Sky, Leap of Faith, Black Widow, Betrayed, Wilder Napalm and A Dangerous Woman.
In 1995 Winger decided to take a hiatus from acting.
In 2002 she said, "I wanted out for years.
I got sick of hearing myself say I wanted to quit.
It's like opening an interview with 'I hate interviews!'
Well, get out!
I stopped reading scripts and stopped caring.
People said, 'We miss you so much.'
But in the last six years, tell me a film that I should have been in.
The few I can think of, the actress was so perfect".
After making Forget Paris in 1995 she was absent from the screen for six years before
returning in 2001 with Big Bad Love, written and directed by her husband, Arliss Howard,
and also marking Winger's debut as a producer.
During her film hiatus, Winger had the female lead in the American Repertory Theater's production
of Anton Chekhov's play Ivanov from November 1999 to January 2000.
In 2001 a critically acclaimed documentary film titled Searching for Debra Winger was
made by Rosanna Arquette and released in 2002 after Winger returned to film acting.
She subsequently starred in the films Radio, Eulogy, Sometimes in April and received positive
reviews for portraying Anne Hathaway's estranged mother in Rachel Getting Married.
She earned an Emmy Award nomination for her title role in the television film Dawn Anna
in 2005, directed by Arliss Howard.
In 2010 she returned to television, making a guest appearance as a high school principal
in an episode of Law & Order.
She also joined the cast of HBO's In Treatment as one of the three patients featured in the
third season.
Her latest acting project is a starring role in the upcoming film In the Woods, the first
installment of Jennifer Elster's multimedia, experimental film series The Being Experience,
planned for multi-platform release in 2013 and 2014, also including: Terrence Howard,
Dave Matthews, Rufus Wainwright, Karen Black, Will Shortz, Liya Kebede, Questlove, Famke
Janssen, Moby, Gale Harold, Paz de la Huerta, Jorgen Leth, Rosie Perez, Aubrey de Grey,
and Alan Cumming.
Other pursuits In 1995 Winger performed as the Wicked Witch
of the West in The Wizard of Oz in Concert: Dreams Come True a musical performance of
the popular story at Lincoln Center to benefit the Children's Defense Fund.
She also narrated the "Cyclone" scene during that performance.
It was originally broadcast on Turner Broadcasting System, and issued on CD as well as video
in 1996.
During her hiatus from the film industry, Winger spent a semester as a teaching fellow
at Harvard University.
In 2008 Winger wrote a book based on her personal recollections titled Undiscovered.
She has shown her support for reconciliation between Arabs and Jews in Israel by visiting
the bilingual Hand in Hand schools where, in 2008, she stated she would "dedicate the
next bit of my life to these schools".
As 2009 president of the Zurich Film Festival jury, Winger joined other members of the Hollywood
film community to speak out against the arrest and prosecution of director Roman Polanski
who was accused of raping a 13-year-old girl in the 1970s, criticizing Switzerland's government
for "philistine collusion" in arresting him so many years later, as he was en route to
attend the Zurich festival.
In 2010 Debra Winger was co-executive producer of the Academy Award-nominated documentary,
Gasland.
She was also the executive producer of the 2012 documentary Bel Borba Aqui about the
life and works of Brazilian graphic artist Bel Borba.
Personal life Winger's three-year relationship with actor
Andrew Rubin ended in 1980.
From 1983 to 1985 Winger dated Bob Kerrey, at the time the Governor of Nebraska, whom
she met while filming Terms of Endearment in Lincoln, Nebraska.
From 1986 to 1990 she was married to actor Timothy Hutton with whom she had a son, Noah
Hutton, a documentary filmmaker born in 1987.
The marriage ended in divorce.
In 1996 she married actor/director Arliss Howard, whom she met on the set of the film
Wilder Napalm.
Their son, Gideon Babe Ruth Howard, was born in 1997.
She is stepmother to Sam Howard, Arliss' son from his prior marriage.
Filmography References
External links Debra Winger at the Internet Movie Database
Transcript of Radio 4 interview Texas Monthly Talks: Debra Winger, YouTube
video posted on November 3, 2008