 ProductLink |
|
 Mary Debra Winger was born May 16, 1955 in Cleveland, Ohio, to Ruth (Felder), an office manager, and Robert Jack Winger, a meat packer. She is from a Jewish family (originally from Austria-Hungary and the Russian Empire). Her maternal grandparents called her Mary, while her parents called her Debra (her father named her Debra after his favorite actress, Debra Paget). The family moved to California when Debra was five. She fell in love with acting in high school but kept it a secret from her family. She was a precocious teenager, having graduated high school at an early age of 15. She enrolled in college, majoring in criminology. She worked part-time in the local amusement park when she got thrown from a truck and suffered serious injuries and went temporarily blind for several months. She was in the hospital when she vowed to pursue her passion for acting.After she recovered, she abandoned college and studied acting. Like any struggling actor, she did commercials and guest-starred on 70s TV shows like Task Force: Part I (1976) and Wonder Woman (1975), where she performed as Diana's little sister, Wonder Girl. She also made her feature film debut in the embarrassing soft-core porn film, Slumber Party '57 (1976). (Years later on Inside the Actors Studio (1994), host James Lipton asked her to name her first film, and she refused to answer him.) Her next two films, French Postcards (1979) and Thank God It's Friday (1978), did absolutely nothing for her career. When Sissy Spacek said no to playing the character Sissy in Urban Cowboy (1980), almost every young actress in Hollywood pursued the role. Debra won the role over a then-unknown Michelle Pfeiffer and gave a star-making performance as John Travolta's wife. Her handling of the mechanical bull made her a new kind of sex symbol. She would always remain grateful to her director James Bridges for threatening to quit the film if the studio didn't cast her. However, she followed it up with a flop, Cannery Row (1982). But, she became part of one of the top-grossing films of all time by providing her deep, throaty voice to the title character of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982) as a favor to the film's director Steven Spielberg (Note: IMDB cast list for E.T. indicates Pat Welsh as the voice for that character.). She also appeared in the film for a few seconds in the Halloween scene, where she is wearing a zombie mask and carrying a poodle. She received her first Academy Award nomination as Best Actress for the huge hit, An Officer and a Gentleman (1982), where her on-screen love scenes with Richard Gere became just as legendary as her off-screen fights with him and with director Taylor Hackford.Debra's reputation as a great talent, as well as her reputation as a difficult actress grew with her next film, Terms of Endearment (1983), which not only earned her a second Oscar nomination as Best Actress but also won the Best Picture as well. She also earned the Best Actress Award from the National Society of Film Critics. Debra was at the top of her game and was the most sought-after actress in Hollywood, but she turned down quality roles and lucrative offers for three years. Some speculated that the reason was her romantic involvement with Bob Kerrey, then-governor of Nebraska, while others have stated it was her back problems. Whatever her reasons were, her career lost its heat. Her long-delayed film Mike's Murder (1984), reuniting her with her "Urban Cowboy" director James Bridges, didn't help matters either when it became a critical and financial flop. Debra tried to revive her career by starring in the big-budget comedy Legal Eagles (1986), but she disliked the film so much that she publicly stated that the director, Ivan Reitman, was one of the two worst directors she worked with, the other director being Taylor Hackford (An Officer and a Gentleman (1982)). She also walked out on her agency, CAA, but returned several years later.Her personal life made headlines when she left Bob Kerrey and eloped with Oscar-winning actor Timothy Hutton in 1986. In 1987, she gave birth to their son, Noah Hutton. She also starred in Black Widow (1987), which wasn't a hit, and acted alongside Hutton as a male angel in Made in Heaven (1987) which flopped. She followed that up by starring in another flop, Betrayed (1988), which featured a fleeting cameo by Hutton. She separated from Hutton in 1988 and they divorced in 1990, at which time she had two more bombs, Everybody Wins (1990) and The Sheltering Sky (1990). However, she relished the experience on The Sheltering Sky (1990) so much that she stayed in the Sahara desert long after filming wrapped. She came back to US and filmed a Steve Martin vehicle, Leap of Faith (1992), which did nothing for her career. But, she found love on the set of her next film, Wilder Napalm (1993) when she co-starred opposite Arliss Howard, who became her next husband. The film flopped but their marriage lasted. She received good notices for A Dangerous Woman (1993), but it was Shadowlands (1993) which finally brought her renewed respectability and her third Academy Award nomination as Best Actress. She followed that up with a forgettable comedy, Forget Paris (1995). Then, she signed to do "Divine Rapture" with Marlon Brando and Johnny Depp in a small village in Ireland, but two weeks into filming, financing fell apart, and the film was never completed. Winger was never paid for her work, and neither were the poor villagers, and Winger said she was devastated for them. Now 40, Debra felt that there were no good roles for her and she concentrated on motherhood by having a second son, Babe Howard, in 1997. Her six-year absence from films inspired a documentary by Rosanna Arquette titled Searching for Debra Winger (2002), which is about sexism and ageism in Hollywood. In 2001, she returned to acting in her husband's film, Big Bad Love (2001), which she also co-produced. It renewed her love for acting, and she has ventured out into television as well by earning her first Emmy nomination as Best Actress for Dawn Anna (2005), directed by her husband. In 2008, she wrote a well-written book, based on her personal recollections, titled "Undiscovered". And she followed that up by winning rave reviews as Anne Hathaway's mother in Jonathan Demme's Rachel Getting Married (2008). However, it wasn't enough to reignite her feature film career, so she ventured towards television in 2010 with a guest-starring role on "Law and Order" titled Boy on Fire (2010), to a seven-episode stint on In Treatment (2008), to a two-part miniseries The Red Tent (2014), to a regular role on The Ranch (2016) . Her television exposure reignited her feature film career, and she was cast in her first romantic lead in 22 years in The Lovers (2017). And she had also mellowed with age, presenting an award to Richard Gere in 2011 and saying kind things about director Taylor Hackford in 2017, after having fought with both of them during An Officer and a Gentleman (1982). Nobody can deny that Debra Winger is one of the best American actresses ever. Her fans hope that Hollywood will finally reward her talent with a long-overdue Academy Award.
Bio:
Mary Debra Winger was born May 16, 1955 in Cleveland, Ohio, to Ruth (Felder), an office manager, and Robert Jack Winger, a meat packer. She is from a Jewish family (originally from Austria-Hungary and the Russian Empire). Her maternal grandparents called her Mary, while her parents called her Debra (her father named her Debra after his favorite actress, Debra Paget). The family moved to California when Debra was five. She fell in love with acting in high school but kept it a secret from her family. She was a precocious teenager, having graduated high school at an early age of 15. She enrolled in college, majoring in criminology. She worked part-time in the local amusement park when she got thrown from a truck and suffered serious injuries and went temporarily blind for several months. She was in the hospital when she vowed to pursue her passion for acting.After she recovered, she abandoned college and studied acting. Like any struggling actor, she did commercials and guest-starred on 70s TV shows like Task Force: Part I (1976) and Wonder Woman (1975), where she performed as Diana's little sister, Wonder Girl. She also made her feature film debut in the embarrassing soft-core porn film, Slumber Party '57 (1976). (Years later on Inside the Actors Studio (1994), host James Lipton asked her to name her first film, and she refused to answer him.) Her next two films, French Postcards (1979) and Thank God It's Friday (1978), did absolutely nothing for her career. When Sissy Spacek said no to playing the character Sissy in Urban Cowboy (1980), almost every young actress in Hollywood pursued the role. Debra won the role over a then-unknown Michelle Pfeiffer and gave a star-making performance as John Travolta's wife. Her handling of the mechanical bull made her a new kind of sex symbol. She would always remain grateful to her director James Bridges for threatening to quit the film if the studio didn't cast her. However, she followed it up with a flop, Cannery Row (1982). But, she became part of one of the top-grossing films of all time by providing her deep, throaty voice to the title character of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982) as a favor to the film's director Steven Spielberg (Note: IMDB cast list for E.T. indicates Pat Welsh as the voice for that character.). She also appeared in the film for a few seconds in the Halloween scene, where she is wearing a zombie mask and carrying a poodle. She received her first Academy Award nomination as Best Actress for the huge hit, An Officer and a Gentleman (1982), where her on-screen love scenes with Richard Gere became just as legendary as her off-screen fights with him and with director Taylor Hackford.Debra's reputation as a great talent, as well as her reputation as a difficult actress grew with her next film, Terms of Endearment (1983), which not only earned her a second Oscar nomination as Best Actress but also won the Best Picture as well. She also earned the Best Actress Award from the National Society of Film Critics. Debra was at the top of her game and was the most sought-after actress in Hollywood, but she turned down quality roles and lucrative offers for three years. Some speculated that the reason was her romantic involvement with Bob Kerrey, then-governor of Nebraska, while others have stated it was her back problems. Whatever her reasons were, her career lost its heat. Her long-delayed film Mike's Murder (1984), reuniting her with her "Urban Cowboy" director James Bridges, didn't help matters either when it became a critical and financial flop. Debra tried to revive her career by starring in the big-budget comedy Legal Eagles (1986), but she disliked the film so much that she publicly stated that the director, Ivan Reitman, was one of the two worst directors she worked with, the other director being Taylor Hackford (An Officer and a Gentleman (1982)). She also walked out on her agency, CAA, but returned several years later.Her personal life made headlines when she left Bob Kerrey and eloped with Oscar-winning actor Timothy Hutton in 1986. In 1987, she gave birth to their son, Noah Hutton. She also starred in Black Widow (1987), which wasn't a hit, and acted alongside Hutton as a male angel in Made in Heaven (1987) which flopped. She followed that up by starring in another flop, Betrayed (1988), which featured a fleeting cameo by Hutton. She separated from Hutton in 1988 and they divorced in 1990, at which time she had two more bombs, Everybody Wins (1990) and The Sheltering Sky (1990). However, she relished the experience on The Sheltering Sky (1990) so much that she stayed in the Sahara desert long after filming wrapped. She came back to US and filmed a Steve Martin vehicle, Leap of Faith (1992), which did nothing for her career. But, she found love on the set of her next film, Wilder Napalm (1993) when she co-starred opposite Arliss Howard, who became her next husband. The film flopped but their marriage lasted. She received good notices for A Dangerous Woman (1993), but it was Shadowlands (1993) which finally brought her renewed respectability and her third Academy Award nomination as Best Actress. She followed that up with a forgettable comedy, Forget Paris (1995). Then, she signed to do "Divine Rapture" with Marlon Brando and Johnny Depp in a small village in Ireland, but two weeks into filming, financing fell apart, and the film was never completed. Winger was never paid for her work, and neither were the poor villagers, and Winger said she was devastated for them. Now 40, Debra felt that there were no good roles for her and she concentrated on motherhood by having a second son, Babe Howard, in 1997. Her six-year absence from films inspired a documentary by Rosanna Arquette titled Searching for Debra Winger (2002), which is about sexism and ageism in Hollywood. In 2001, she returned to acting in her husband's film, Big Bad Love (2001), which she also co-produced. It renewed her love for acting, and she has ventured out into television as well by earning her first Emmy nomination as Best Actress for Dawn Anna (2005), directed by her husband. In 2008, she wrote a well-written book, based on her personal recollections, titled "Undiscovered". And she followed that up by winning rave reviews as Anne Hathaway's mother in Jonathan Demme's Rachel Getting Married (2008). However, it wasn't enough to reignite her feature film career, so she ventured towards television in 2010 with a guest-starring role on "Law and Order" titled Boy on Fire (2010), to a seven-episode stint on In Treatment (2008), to a two-part miniseries The Red Tent (2014), to a regular role on The Ranch (2016) . Her television exposure reignited her feature film career, and she was cast in her first romantic lead in 22 years in The Lovers (2017). And she had also mellowed with age, presenting an award to Richard Gere in 2011 and saying kind things about director Taylor Hackford in 2017, after having fought with both of them during An Officer and a Gentleman (1982). Nobody can deny that Debra Winger is one of the best American actresses ever. Her fans hope that Hollywood will finally reward her talent with a long-overdue Academy Award.
Tivia:
Her notorious off-camera clashes with equally mercurial Shirley MacLaine brought out the best in both actresses in the complexity of their on-camera contentious mother/daughter relationship during the making of their Oscar-winning film Terms of Endearment (1983). When MacLaine nabbed the Best Actress Oscar instead of fellow nominee Winger in 1984 and famously shouted, "I deserve this!," she managed to address her co-star as "dear Debra" despite the fact there was no love lost between them.She turned down Karen Allen's role in Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), which turned out to be one of the highest grossing films of all time.She was originally signed to play Peggy Sue Bodell in Peggy Sue Got Married (1986) but was forced to withdraw after her back was severely injured in a bicycle accident. Debra missed out on other roles, due to the many months it took her to fully recover.Reportedly didn't like working on Wonder Woman (1975) but the series's star Lynda Carter said the two hadn't had any problems and that she had been like a big sister to Winger.James L. Brooks wrote Broadcast News (1987) especially for her, but she turned it down because she was pregnant with her son Noah Hutton, and the role went to Holly Hunter, who was nominated for an Oscar for it.She spent a good part of the 1980s trying to get the studios to cast her in a biography of torch singer Libby Holman, and another on Isabel Eberhardt, a 19th-century mystic who became involved in fighting religious wars in the Middle East. However, she had burned too many bridges to call in any favors. Also, at that time, studios were reluctant to finance female-driven films, so neither biography was ever made.She turned down the role of Alex Forrest in Fatal Attraction (1987), which went to Glenn Close.At first, she was excited about winning the role of Wonder Girl on the television series Wonder Woman (1975) but quickly became disillusioned and spent all her salary from the series to hire an attorney to get her out of her contract.Winger spent two years of her youth in Israel (where she served for three months in the army and worked on a kibbutz).Had a romance with then-Governor of Nebraska Bob Kerrey during the filming of Terms of Endearment (1983).Among her admirers was Bette Davis, who lauded the actress for having talent and for being "difficult"; she herself had been called the same thing during her heyday.Has two sons: Noah Hutton (Emmanuel Noah Hutton; b. April 29, 1987) with ex-husband Timothy Hutton, and Babe Howard (Gideon Babe Ruth Howard; b. June 15, 1997) with husband Arliss Howard.According to Kathleen Turner's memoir, Michael Douglas originally offered Debra the role of Joan in Romancing the Stone (1984). They met at a Mexican restaurant to discuss it but, according to Douglas, she ended up biting him. She didn't get the part. She was also considered for Turner's role in Body Heat (1981).In his 2018 memoir, Nick Nolte wrote that Debra is "beautiful in her own way" but that he didn't like her antics when they worked together on Cannery Row (1982). He didn't explain why he chose to work with her again on Everybody Wins (1990) or reference their rumored real-life romance.She didn't get along with her leading man Richard Gere during the making of the hit film An Officer and a Gentleman (1982). She publicly called him a "brick wall", while he said there was "tension" between them. He played the title role, had top billing, had more screen time and earned a larger salary than her, while hers was just a love interest role. Still, he reacted badly when he realized that she was stealing every scene she was in with her charisma and acting talent that resulted in a Best Actress Oscar nomination for her, while he wasn't nominated at all. Thirty years later, they patched things up when she presented him with an award at the Rome Film Festival.She was given the choice of the two roles in Black Widow (1987); she chose the role of the FBI agent, because she didn't understand the motivation as to why the Black Widow kills, so the title role went to Theresa Russell.When she was 14, her father had installed a burglar alarm for the celebrated director George Cukor and told him that his daughter wanted to be a actress. Cukor looked at Winger and told her, "That voice, and you got no walk and you got no class!" She suspected that her father might have put Cukor up to this, in order to discourage her from pursuing a acting career. Cukor was still alive when Winger became a star with Urban Cowboy (1980) but he didn't get a chance to know about her first Oscar nomination as Best Actress for An Officer and a Gentleman (1982), since the nomination was announced a few days after he died.In spite of her reputation of being difficult, several people repeatedly worked with her because of her talent: filmmaker James Bridges (Urban Cowboy (1980) and Mike's Murder (1984)), actors Nick Nolte (Cannery Row (1982) and Everybody Wins (1990)) and Gabriel Byrne (A Dangerous Woman (1993) and In Treatment (2008)), actresses Angie Dickinson (Task Force: Part I (1976) and Big Bad Love (2001)) and Rosanna Arquette (Big Bad Love (2001) and Searching for Debra Winger (2002)), writer/actor David Mamet ( Black Widow (1987) and the stage play "The Anarchist" (2012)), her first husband Timothy Hutton ((Made in Heaven (1987) and Betrayed (1988)) and current husband Arliss Howard (Wilder Napalm (1993), Big Bad Love (2001), Dawn Anna (2005)), the stage plays "How I Learned To Drive" (1998) and "Ivanov" (1999)).Directed by eight Academy Award winners: Steven Spielberg, Jonathan Demme, James L. Brooks, Taylor Hackford, Costa-Gavras, Bernardo Bertolucci, David S. Ward and Richard Attenborough.She was angry when director Penny Marshall cast Madonna in A League of Their Own (1992) telling her, "You're making an Elvis movie." Marshall didn't know what that meant, which frustrated Winger even more, since she dropped out of the film and Geena Davis got her role. Madonna was no fan of Winger either, since she told Carrie Fisher that one of her nicknames was Kit Moresby, a character from a novel she loved, until she saw the film adaptation of that novel where Winger played Kit in The Sheltering Sky (1990). She told Fisher, "I didn't want to be Kit Moresby anymore, because it was so disappointing. I didn't want people to think that I was Debra Winger." What's ironic is that both their ex-husbands Timothy Hutton and Sean Penn worked together twice in Taps (1981) and The Falcon and the Snowman (1985) and became friends.Friends with Sheena Easton.She had a on-and-off relationship with U.S. Senator Bob Kerrey (D-NE) from 1982-90, but never married him despite persistent rumors to the contrary. They remained friends. Her husbands, Timothy Hutton and Arliss Howard, were also actors but were not Jewish. She raised her sons by these marriages in the Jewish faith, however.In 1995, she appeared in London, Washington, and New York with both the London Symphony and the New World Symphony under the direction of Michael Tilson Thomas, performing his composition based on the life of Anne Frank.Tim Matheson said that the then-unknown Debra "rocked her audition" to play his girlfriend in Dreamer (1979) but the studio decided to cast Susan Blakely instead.Daughter of Robert and Ruth Winger.She turned down Jessica Lange's role in Music Box (1989).Attended and graduated from James Monroe High School in Sepulveda, California in 1973.She first noticed future husband, Oscar-winning actor Timothy Hutton, on TV when he accepted the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for Ordinary People (1980) and fell for him then and there. They met in person two years later, in 1983, for a film that they were supposed to be cast in, called 'Road Show'. But it was revamped and made with different actors a decade later under a new title, Medicine Man (1992). Hutton later said they talked for six hours about everything at that first meeting, and Winger said there was so much electricity between them that they got scared and ran in opposite directions. They kept running into each other once every six months, and Hutton later described these encounters "like turning magnets around." They finally stuck together when Winger emceed Farm Aid on New Year's Eve in 1986 and Hutton was one of the guests. Almost immediately, they started living together and married just three months later. Despair followed the happy occasion. Her orthodox Jewish grandmother stopped talking to her, because Hutton wasn't Jewish. Worse, Winger later miscarried after getting pregnant on her wedding night. She got pregnant again and gave birth to their son, Noah Hutton, in 1987, but just a year later, they separated and divorced two years later. During their short marriage, they appeared together in two films (Made in Heaven (1987) and Betrayed (1988)) that flopped at the box office, as well as a "Life" magazine cover. A decade after their divorce, Winger (married to her second husband Arliss Howard) said there was "no bad blood" between them. In 2016, she and Howard invited their ex-spouses to spend Thanksgiving with them, and she said there was no awkwardness or tension anymore. They comforted each other after learning Donald Trump had defeated Hillary Clinton in the presidential election a few weeks earlier.Sister-in-law of actor/writer Jim Howard.Attended and graduated from Oliver Wendell Holmes Junior High School in Northridge, California in 1970.Her son Noah married Jewish film producer Taylor Hess. She is originally from Ohio, just like Winger.Provided the voice of ET in the film Star Wars uncredited.Born at 5:15pm-EDTIn a 1990 interview with "Vanity Fair" magazine, she said she accepted Everybody Wins (1990) for these "wrong reasons": director Karel Reisz, screenwriter Arthur Miller, and a desire to play a role with a multiple-personality disorder. She also acknowledged that she liked working with Reisz and wasn't upset with him when the movie flopped. |
| Name: |
Debra Winger |
Type: |
Actress,Producer,Additional Crew (IMDB) |
| Area: |
All World |
Platform: |
IMDB |
| Category: |
|
Business scope: |
Actress,Producer,Additional Crew |
| Products for sale: |
Actress,Producer,Additional Crew |
| Model rank: |
247 |
| Last update: |
2024-07-01 03:51:21 |
| Height: |
5' 4' (1.63 m) |
| Biography: |
Mary Debra Winger was born May 16, 1955 in Cleveland, Ohio, to Ruth (Felder), an office manager, and Robert Jack Winger, a meat packer. She is from a Jewish family (originally from Austria-Hungary and the Russian Empire). Her maternal grandparents ca |
| Trivia: |
Her notorious off-camera clashes with equally mercurial Shirley MacLaine brought out the best in both actresses in the complexity of their on-camera contentious mother/daughter relationship during the making of their Oscar-winning film Terms of Endearment (1983). When MacLaine nabbed the Best Actress Oscar instead of fellow nominee Winger in 1984 and famously shouted, "I deserve this!," she managed to address her co-star as "dear Debra" despite the fact there was no love lost between them.She turned down Karen Allen's role in Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), which turned out to be one of the highest grossing films of all time.She was originally signed to play Peggy Sue Bodell in Peggy Sue Got Married (1986) but was forced to withdraw after her back was severely injured in a bicycle accident. Debra missed out on other roles, due to the many months it took her to fully recover.Reportedly didn't like working on Wonder Woman (1975) but the series's star Lynda Carter said the two hadn't had any problems and that she had been like a big sister to Winger.James L. Brooks wrote Broadcast News (1987) especially for her, but she turned it down because she was pregnant with her son Noah Hutton, and the role went to Holly Hunter, who was nominated for an Oscar for it.She spent a good part of the 1980s trying to get the studios to cast her in a biography of torch singer Libby Holman, and another on Isabel Eberhardt, a 19th-century mystic who became involved in fighting religious wars in the Middle East. However, she had burned too many bridges to call in any favors. Also, at that time, studios were reluctant to finance female-driven films, so neither biography was ever made.She turned down the role of Alex Forrest in Fatal Attraction (1987), which went to Glenn Close.At first, she was excited about winning the role of Wonder Girl on the television series Wonder Woman (1975) but quickly became disillusioned and spent all her salary from the series to hire an attorney to get her out of her contract.Winger spent two years of her youth in Israel (where she served for three months in the army and worked on a kibbutz).Had a romance with then-Governor of Nebraska Bob Kerrey during the filming of Terms of Endearment (1983).Among her admirers was Bette Davis, who lauded the actress for having talent and for being "difficult"; she herself had been called the same thing during her heyday.Has two sons: Noah Hutton (Emmanuel Noah Hutton; b. April 29, 1987) with ex-husband Timothy Hutton, and Babe Howard (Gideon Babe Ruth Howard; b. June 15, 1997) with husband Arliss Howard.According to Kathleen Turner's memoir, Michael Douglas originally offered Debra the role of Joan in Romancing the Stone (1984). They met at a Mexican restaurant to discuss it but, according to Douglas, she ended up biting him. She didn't get the part. She was also considered for Turner's role in Body Heat (1981).In his 2018 memoir, Nick Nolte wrote that Debra is "beautiful in her own way" but that he didn't like her antics when they worked together on Cannery Row (1982). He didn't explain why he chose to work with her again on Everybody Wins (1990) or reference their rumored real-life romance.She didn't get along with her leading man Richard Gere during the making of the hit film An Officer and a Gentleman (1982). She publicly called him a "brick wall", while he said there was "tension" between them. He played the title role, had top billing, had more screen time and earned a larger salary than her, while hers was just a love interest role. Still, he reacted badly when he realized that she was stealing every scene she was in with her charisma and acting talent that resulted in a Best Actress Oscar nomination for her, while he wasn't nominated at all. Thirty years later, they patched things up when she presented him with an award at the Rome Film Festival.She was given the choice of the two roles in Black Widow (1987); she chose the role of the FBI agent, because she didn't understand the motivation as to why the Black Widow kills, so the title role went to Theresa Russell.When she was 14, her father had installed a burglar alarm for the celebrated director George Cukor and told him that his daughter wanted to be a actress. Cukor looked at Winger and told her, "That voice, and you got no walk and you got no class!" She suspected that her father might have put Cukor up to this, in order to discourage her from pursuing a acting career. Cukor was still alive when Winger became a star with Urban Cowboy (1980) but he didn't get a chance to know about her first Oscar nomination as Best Actress for An Officer and a Gentleman (1982), since the nomination was announced a few days after he died.In spite of her reputation of being difficult, several people repeatedly worked with her because of her talent: filmmaker James Bridges (Urban Cowboy (1980) and Mike's Murder (1984)), actors Nick Nolte (Cannery Row (1982) and Everybody Wins (1990)) and Gabriel Byrne (A Dangerous Woman (1993) and In Treatment (2008)), actresses Angie Dickinson (Task Force: Part I (1976) and Big Bad Love (2001)) and Rosanna Arquette (Big Bad Love (2001) and Searching for Debra Winger (2002)), writer/actor David Mamet ( Black Widow (1987) and the stage play "The Anarchist" (2012)), her first husband Timothy Hutton ((Made in Heaven (1987) and Betrayed (1988)) and current husband Arliss Howard (Wilder Napalm (1993), Big Bad Love (2001), Dawn Anna (2005)), the stage plays "How I Learned To Drive" (1998) and "Ivanov" (1999)).Directed by eight Academy Award winners: Steven Spielberg, Jonathan Demme, James L. Brooks, Taylor Hackford, Costa-Gavras, Bernardo Bertolucci, David S. Ward and Richard Attenborough.She was angry when director Penny Marshall cast Madonna in A League of Their Own (1992) telling her, "You're making an Elvis movie." Marshall didn't know what that meant, which frustrated Winger even more, since she dropped out of the film and Geena Davis got her role. Madonna was no fan of Winger either, since she told Carrie Fisher that one of her nicknames was Kit Moresby, a character from a novel she loved, until she saw the film adaptation of that novel where Winger played Kit in The Sheltering Sky (1990). She told Fisher, "I didn't want to be Kit Moresby anymore, because it was so disappointing. I didn't want people to think that I was Debra Winger." What's ironic is that both their ex-husbands Timothy Hutton and Sean Penn worked together twice in Taps (1981) and The Falcon and the Snowman (1985) and became friends.Friends with Sheena Easton.She had a on-and-off relationship with U.S. Senator Bob Kerrey (D-NE) from 1982-90, but never married him despite persistent rumors to the contrary. They remained friends. Her husbands, Timothy Hutton and Arliss Howard, were also actors but were not Jewish. She raised her sons by these marriages in the Jewish faith, however.In 1995, she appeared in London, Washington, and New York with both the London Symphony and the New World Symphony under the direction of Michael Tilson Thomas, performing his composition based on the life of Anne Frank.Tim Matheson said that the then-unknown Debra "rocked her audition" to play his girlfriend in Dreamer (1979) but the studio decided to cast Susan Blakely instead.Daughter of Robert and Ruth Winger.She turned down Jessica Lange's role in Music Box (1989).Attended and graduated from James Monroe High School in Sepulveda, California in 1973.She first noticed future husband, Oscar-winning actor Timothy Hutton, on TV when he accepted the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for Ordinary People (1980) and fell for him then and there. They met in person two years later, in 1983, for a film that they were supposed to be cast in, called 'Road Show'. But it was revamped and made with different actors a decade later under a new title, Medicine Man (1992). Hutton later said they talked for six hours about everything at that first meeting, and Winger said there was so much electricity between them that they got scared and ran in opposite directions. They kept running into each other once every six months, and Hutton later described these encounters "like turning magnets around." They finally stuck together when Winger emceed Farm Aid on New Year's Eve in 1986 and Hutton was one of the guests. Almost immediately, they started living together and married just three months later. Despair followed the happy occasion. Her orthodox Jewish grandmother stopped talking to her, because Hutton wasn't Jewish. Worse, Winger later miscarried after getting pregnant on her wedding night. She got pregnant again and gave birth to their son, Noah Hutton, in 1987, but just a year later, they separated and divorced two years later. During their short marriage, they appeared together in two films (Made in Heaven (1987) and Betrayed (1988)) that flopped at the box office, as well as a "Life" magazine cover. A decade after their divorce, Winger (married to her second husband Arliss Howard) said there was "no bad blood" between them. In 2016, she and Howard invited their ex-spouses to spend Thanksgiving with them, and she said there was no awkwardness or tension anymore. They comforted each other after learning Donald Trump had defeated Hillary Clinton in the presidential election a few weeks earlier.Sister-in-law of actor/writer Jim Howard.Attended and graduated from Oliver Wendell Holmes Junior High School in Northridge, California in 1970.Her son Noah married Jewish film producer Taylor Hess. She is originally from Ohio, just like Winger.Provided the voice of ET in the film Star Wars uncredited.Born at 5:15pm-EDTIn a 1990 interview with "Vanity Fair" magazine, she said she accepted Everybody Wins (1990) for these "wrong reasons": director Karel Reisz, screenwriter Arthur Miller, and a desire to play a role with a multiple-personality disorder. She also acknowledged that she liked working with Reisz and wasn't upset with him when the movie flopped. |
| Trademarks: |
Deep throaty voice |
| Quotes: |
[on her early roles in commercials] I was the all-American face. You name it, honey - American Dairy Milk, Metropolitan Life insurance, McDonald's, Burger King. The Face That Didn't Matter - that's what I called my face.
<br />
<hr>
I have trouble with star billing. I remember thinking on Cannery Row (1982): How can I put my name ahead of Steinbeck's?
<br />
<hr>
[on Bernardo Bertolucci] For me, Bernardo is The Function. The only way I can explain it is in the analogy with mathematics and the word 'function' - addition, subtraction, multiplication, anything that numbers go through and change because of it. And when the function is a function of love, the drapes on the windows, the doors that are hung, the characters, the clothes, everything goes through this function and comes out touched and inspired by it. There are a lot of numbers but what really matters is the function.
<br />
<hr>
[on being labeled "difficult"] It was like armor. It kept the fainthearted at a distance. But perhaps I was too tough.
<br />
<hr>
I used to love going on a junket and promoting a film when it was not a 24-hour news cycle, and when there weren't so many media outlets. You could actually talk about the film. And I don't mean to harp on this because, really, it's fine. It's just that it eats itself. It becomes about itself, and its symbiotic and weird and I don't understand the celebrity of it. |
| Salaries: |
Shadowlands (1994) - $2,000,000
<br />
<hr>
The Sheltering Sky (1990) - $3,000,000
<br />
<hr>
Legal Eagles (1986) - $2,500,000
<br />
<hr>
Cannery Row (1982) - $150,000 |
| Job title: |
Actress,Producer,Additional Crew |
| Others works: |
Performed as Li'l Bit in the play How I Learned to Drive in American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge, MA, Sept 18, 1998 to Oct 10, 1998.
TV commercial for Cheer detergent (1978)
In 2008, she wrote a book based on her personal recollections titled &q |
| Spouse: |
Arliss Howard (November 28, 1996 - present) (1 child)Timothy Hutton (March 16, 1986 - March 1, 1990) (divorced, 1 child) |
| Children: |
Noah HuttonBabe Howard |
| Parents: |
Ruth Winger
Robert Winger |
|
