Anecdotes

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 Tendres passions (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 was originally signed to play Peggy Sue Bodell in Peggy Sue s'est mariée (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.

She turned down Karen Allen's role in Les Aventuriers de l'arche perdue (1981), which turned out to be one of the highest grossing films of all time.

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.

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.

She turned down the role of Alex Forrest in Liaison fatale (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.

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.

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.

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 Rue de la sardine (1982). He didn't explain why he chose to work with her again on Chacun sa chance (1990) or reference their rumored real-life romance.

According to Kathleen Turner's memoir, Michael Douglas originally offered Debra the role of Joan in À la poursuite du diamant vert (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 La fièvre au corps (1981).

She didn't get along with her leading man Richard Gere during the making of the hit film Officier et 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.

Had a romance with then-Governor of Nebraska Bob Kerrey during the filming of Tendres passions (1983).

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 Officier et gentleman (1982), since the nomination was announced a few days after he died.

Winger spent two years of her youth in Israel (where she served for three months in the army and worked on a kibbutz).

She was given the choice of the two roles in La veuve noire (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.

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.

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.

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 Mort d'un 'dealer'... (1984)), actors Nick Nolte (Rue de la sardine (1982) and Chacun sa chance (1990)) and Gabriel Byrne (Une femme dangereuse (1993) and En analyse (2008)), actresses Angie Dickinson (Task Force: Part I (1976) and Big Bad Love (2001)) and Rosanna Arquette (Big Bad Love (2001) and À la recherche de Debra Winger (2002)), writer/actor David Mamet ( La veuve noire (1987) and the stage play "The Anarchist" (2012)), her first husband Timothy Hutton ((Made in Heaven: Bienvenue au paradis (1987) and La Main droite du diable (1988)) and current husband Arliss Howard (Mise à feu (1993), Big Bad Love (2001), Une vie à l'épreuve (2005)), the stage plays "How I Learned To Drive" (1998) and "Ivanov" (1999)).

She was angry when director Penny Marshall cast Madonna in Une équipe hors du commun (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 Un thé au Sahara (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 Le jeu du faucon (1985) and became friends.

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.

Friends with Sheena Easton.

Daughter of Robert and Ruth Winger.

She first noticed future husband, Oscar-winning actor Timothy Hutton, on TV when he accepted the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for Des gens comme les autres (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 - Le sorcier de l'océan vert (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: Bienvenue au paradis (1987) and La Main droite du diable (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.

Attended and graduated from James Monroe High School in Sepulveda, California in 1973.

She turned down Jessica Lange's role in Music Box (1989).

Provided the voice of ET in the film Star Wars uncredited.

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.

Sister-in-law of actor/writer Jim Howard.

In a 1990 interview with "Vanity Fair" magazine, she said she accepted Chacun sa chance (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.

Born at 5:15pm-EDT