Debra Winger

Mary Debra Winger (born May 16, 1955) is an American actress. She starred in the films An Officer and a Gentleman, Terms of Endearment (1983), and Shadowlands (1993), each of which earned her a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress. Winger 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 (1993).

Her other films include Urban Cowboy (1980), Legal Eagles (1986), Black Widow (1987), Betrayed (1988), The Sheltering Sky (1990), Forget Paris (1995), and Rachel Getting Married (2008). In 2012, Winger made her Broadway debut in the original production of David Mamet's play The Anarchist. Winger starred in the Netflix original television series The Ranch from 2016 to 2020. She received a lifetime achievement award at the Transilvania International Film Festival in 2014.

Early life and education Mary Debra Winger was born on May 16, 1955 in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, into a Jewish family, to Robert Winger, a meat packer, and Ruth (née Felder), an office manager.

Winger started studying criminology and sociology at California State University, Northridge, but did not complete a degree. However, in a 2008 interview, Winger said she was merely on a typical youth tour that visited the kibbutz.

At age 18, after returning to the United States,

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 (Wonder Girl) in three episodes of ABC's TV series Wonder Woman. The producers wanted Winger to appear more often, but she refused, fearing that the role would hurt her fledgling career. This was followed by a guest role in season 4 of the TV drama Police Woman in 1978. Winger played a supporting role in Willard Huyck's 1979 comic coming-of-age film French Postcards.

Winger's first major role was in Thank God It's Friday in 1978, followed by Urban Cowboy two years later, for which she received a BAFTA nomination and a pair of Golden Globe nominations (for Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role, and Best New Star). In 1982, Winger 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.

Over the years, Winger acquired a reputation for being outspoken and difficult to work with. She has expressed her dislike of An Officer and a Gentleman, for which Winger refused to do any publicity, Other starring roles during this period included Legal Eagles (1986), Black Widow (1987), Made in Heaven (1987), Betrayed (1988), Everybody Wins (1990), The Sheltering Sky (1990), Leap of Faith (1992), Wilder Napalm (1993), and A Dangerous Woman (1993).

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, Winger was absent from the screen for six years before returning in 2001 with Big Bad Love, written and directed by her husband, Arliss Howard. The film was also Winger's debut as a producer.

During her film hiatus, Winger had the female lead in the American Repertory Theater's stage production of Anton Chekhov's play Ivanov from November 1999 to January 2000.

Rosanna Arquette made a critically acclaimed documentary film, Searching for Debra Winger, that was released in 2002 after Winger returned to film acting. She subsequently starred in the films Radio (2003), Eulogy (2004), and Sometimes in April (2005), and received positive reviews for portraying Anne Hathaway's estranged mother in Rachel Getting Married.

Winger earned an Emmy Award nomination for her title role as the mother of a Columbine shooting victim in the 2005 television film Dawn Anna, directed by her husband. In 2010, Winger 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.

In 2013, Winger starred in three episodes of In the Woods, the first installment of Jennifer Elster's multimedia, experimental film series The Being Experience, 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. From 2016 to 2020, Winger starred opposite Sam Elliott and Ashton Kutcher in the Netflix multi-cam comedy The Ranch.

In 2017, Winger had a cameo as Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan in the TV miniseries When We Rise. That same year, she starred in her first romantic lead after many years in The Lovers. Winger has continued to acquire roles in other feature films, such as Tiger City, released in 2018.

In 1995, Winger performed in The Wizard of Oz in Concert: Dreams Come True, a television musical performance of the popular 1939 MGM film at Lincoln Center to benefit the Children's Defense Fund. Her roles in that special were the "Cyclone" narrator and the Wicked Witch of the West. It was originally broadcast on both TBS and TNT.

Other pursuits During her hiatus from the film industry, Winger spent a semester as a teaching fellow at Harvard University. In 2008, she wrote a book, Undiscovered, based on her personal recollections. Winger 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, in 2008, she said she would "dedicate the next bit of my life to these schools".

In 2010, 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.

Recognition and awards Winger received a lifetime achievement award at the Transilvania International Film Festival in 2014.

Personal life Winger's three-year relationship with actor Andrew Rubin ended in 1980. From 1983 to 1985, she dated Bob Kerrey, at the time the governor of Nebraska, whom Winger met while filming Terms of Endearment in Lincoln, Nebraska. Winger also dated her Cannery Row and Everybody Wins co-star Nick Nolte.

From 1986 to 1990, Winger was married to actor Timothy Hutton, with whom she had a son, Noah Hutton, a documentary filmmaker born in 1987. In an interview, Winger stated: "I have a debt for what I grew up with and believed on what the state of Israel has done and what they haven’t done, and how they’re conflating Judaism with Zionism."

Winger is a signatory of the Film Workers for Palestine boycott pledge that was published in September 2025.

Filmography Film

Television

Theatre Year Title Role Notes1999–2000 IvanovLeadAmerican Repertory Theater