Born in Ohio in 1955 to a family of Orthodox Jews, Debra Winger got her start in the world of acting in a peculiar way. After spending part of her adolescence in a kibbutz in Israel and doing her mandatory military service there, which would accentuate an already rebellious and strong character, she returned to the US at the age of 18 and suffered a terrible traffic accident while working as a guide in a theme park that caused her vision and mobility problems for a year. It was at that moment that she knew she was going to be an actress. Not in vain, she seemed destined for it when her parents named her after the actress Debra Paget (The Ten Commandments).
Success would come soon, with the television series Wonder Woman, and then she played John Travolta's wife in City Cowboy, her first important role on the big screen. She demonstrated her ability to seduce the camera and, in return, benefited from two nominations for the Golden Globes. Right after, she obtained her first mention for an Oscar with her most successful and iconic success in the role of an ordinary girl opposite Richard Gere - with whom she got on terribly and whom she even compared to "a brick wall" - in An Officer and a Gentleman, a romantic emblem of the eighties that both would abhor after a difficult shoot. And the producer Don Simpson reproached her for her lack of attractiveness and even urged her to take some pills against fluid retention because he saw her very swollen.
She threw the blisters on the floor and settled the subject with a "fuck you, asshole." Unable to bite her tongue in a sexist industry, Winger complained about sexist discrimination in Hollywood and openly clashed with other colleagues such as Shirley MacLaine in the tear-jerker Terms of Endearment, which gave her her second option for the golden statuette. Although she earned a reputation for being unsympathetic and difficult, her magnetism and naturalness attracted audiences and critics to the point that the relentless Pauline Kael referred to her as “one of the main reasons to go to see movies in the eighties.”
One of her best works was in the role of poet Joy Gresham alongside Anthony Hopkins in Richard Attenborough’s Shadowlands (1993), her third Oscar nomination, and after acting with Billy Crystal in Forget Paris (1995) she disappeared from the cinema map in absolute silence. At 40 years old and at the height of her popularity, she was a complete surprise. “It’s over, I’m fed up,” she exclaimed one day, tired of the industry’s constant demands that she always be perfect. “Michelle Pfeiffer and I are the same age. We started in this business together, but now she looks like my little sister. How can something like that happen? Everyone assumes that you want to look younger. No one even questions it. The photographer or photo editor assumes that you want everything erased from your face,” she said.
She was nominated for an Oscar three times and after working with Billy Cristal in ‘Forget Paris’ she disappeared from the cinema map
From then on she focused on her family, traveled, took care of her farm and even taught at Harvard University. She began to live her own life as she wanted. “I didn’t leave Hollywood, but I walked somewhere else. I knew exactly where I was going” she told New York Magazine in 2001. Rosanna Arquette made her the standard-bearer for mature actresses in the documentary Searching for Debra Winger (2002), where she asked herself why she left the profession at the height of her career. This was the starting point for obtaining the testimony of actresses of the stature of Jane Fonda, Holly Hunter, Whoopi Goldberg, Sharon Stone or Melanie Griffith, women who, as soon as they left their youth behind, were forgotten by the film industry.
Over time, she has come out of voluntary retirement to appear in independent productions that appealed to her and in some television series, such as The Ranch or The Lovers. Her most recent appearance on the big screen was in Miranda July's drama Kajillionaire, which premiered at the last edition of the Sundance festival to good critical acclaim. At 65, Winger feels happy and comfortable showing off her wrinkles and with the direction her life has taken: "My only advice, if you are worried about getting older, is to have fewer mirrors in your home." Some of her colleagues should take note.
