Debra Winger

Debra Winger (born May 16, 1955) is an American actress.

Early life

Winger was born Mary Debra Winger in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, the daughter of Ruth (née Felder), an office manager, and Robert Winger, a meat packer.^[1] She was raised in an Orthodox Jewish family.^[2] In the early 1970s, she spent several weeks at Beit Zera, a kibbutz in Israel.^[3][4] She has stated publicly and with amusement that the Internet has a growing "snowball" of claims that she had been part of a kibbutz in Israel, whereas she says she was merely on a typical Israeli youth program that visited the kibbutz.^[5] After returning to the United States, she was involved in an automobile accident and suffered a cerebral hemorrhage as a result. She was left partially paralyzed and blind for ten months, although she was initially 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.^[6]

Professional life

Acting career

Winger's first acting role was as "Debbie" in the 1976 sexploitation film Slumber Party '57^[7]. Her next role was as Diana Prince's younger sister Drusilla (Wonder Girl) in the Wonder Woman television series.

Winger's acting work has received critical acclaim. She got her first starring role in Urban Cowboy in 1980, opposite John Travolta, for which she received a BAFTA award nomination. In 1982, she co-starred with Nick Nolte in Cannery Row and opposite 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 1993, for which she also received her second BAFTA award nomination. Her performance in A Dangerous Woman garnered a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress.^[8]

Winger was originally cast in the lead role in A League of their Own but dropped out and was replaced by Geena Davis.

From November 1999 to January 2000, Winger had the female lead in the American Repertory Theater's production of Anton Chekov's play Ivanov.^[9]

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.. Other films include Legal Eagles, Made in Heaven, Everybody Wins, The Sheltering Sky, Leap of Faith, Black Widow, Betrayed, Wilder Napalm, A Dangerous Woman and Sometimes in April. She earned an Emmy Award nomination for her title role in the television film Dawn Anna in 2005, directed by her second husband, Arliss Howard.

In 2008 she got positive reviews as Anne Hathaway's estranged mother in Rachel Getting Married^[10].

Intellectual development

In 1995, Winger turned 40 and began a hiatus from the film industry, during which she spent a semester as a teaching fellow at Harvard University.

In 2008, Winger wrote a book based on her personal recollections titled "Undiscovered."^[11]

Activism

In 1995, Winger performed 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. The performance was originally broadcast on Turner Network Television (TNT), and issued on CD and video in 1996.

She has shown her support for reconciliation between Arabs and Jews in Israel by visiting the bilingual Hand in Hand schools (Galilee Jewish-Arab School, Gesher al HaWadi School) where she stated she would "dedicate the next bit of my life to these schools".^[12]

Personal life

In 1983, she dated Bob Kerrey, who was the then-Governor of Nebraska, 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^[13] born in 1987.

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 (known as Babe), was born in 1997. She is stepmother to Sam Howard.

Filmography

References

External links

• Debra Winger at the Internet Movie Database
• Debra Winger at TV.com
• Transcript of Radio 4 interview