Why You Rarely Hear From Debra Winger Anymore

One would be hard-pressed to single out a more romantic and iconic movie moment than Debra Winger being carried out of her factory job by newly-minted naval officer Richard Gere in 1982's "An Officer and a Gentleman." It was certainly a high point of Winger's career as a Hollywood leading lady in the '80s. But behind the scenes and in her own off-screen life, she's never fallen into the trap of being typecast or pigeonholed. 

Winger has always been a maverick: enigmatic, unpredictable, and frequently noted for contentious relationships with co-stars and directors alike. Her antagonistic and bizarre behavior has even cost her a few plum roles in now-classic films and tarnished her professional reputation. To her credit, Winger has obviously never wanted to play the usual Hollywood game, an often cruel one that does not typically cultivate many good roles for women past the age of 40.

Over the years, she's often stepped out of the Hollywood limelight to live on her terms. Despite her many legendary performances, she still considers herself an outsider in the movie business and isn't shy about denouncing the perils and inequities of the notoriously fickle, shallow, and sexist industry. Although she famously turned her back on her mainstream film career, these days she's back at work in front of the camera. Winger just hasn't found many Hollywood roles to be especially interesting, and it's evident that's why she's shifted her life priorities and perhaps hasn't been as vocal as of late.

Debra Winger takes her work seriously and has been recognized for her efforts. A three-time Academy Award nominee in the 1980s, she became one of Hollywood's shining stars. Winger's star turns in "Terms of Endearment" and "An Officer and a Gentleman" were not only box office smashes, with both "Terms" and "Officer" grossing over $100 million, but they also made her a critical darling. By the early '90s, Winger was wielding some serious Hollywood power and exercised it on the 1992 film "A League of Their Own," when she joined the ranks of actors who quit roles because of another actor.

According to Vanity Fair, Winger was already cast in the lead role of Dottie in the classic baseball film when Madonna was hired to play fellow Rockford Peaches team member Mae. Winger was months-deep in baseball training with the Chicago Cubs when she got word of Madonna's casting. Winger, who dissed the pop star's casting choice as downgrading the movie into "an Elvis film," left the project, but not without collecting her full paycheck. Geena Davis went on to play Dottie and Madonna stayed in the picture, with "A League of Their Own" becoming a box office hit and a celebrated cult classic. Although Winger lost out on starring in such a highly influential film, she left with her dignity intact and her wallet full.

Debra Winger was an established Hollywood star in the 1990s. By mid-decade, she had appeared in a number of films alongside other Tinseltown heavyweights like Steve Martin, Billy Crystal, and Anthony Hopkins. Films like "Leap of Faith," "Forget Paris," and "Shadowlands" might not been zeitgeist-defining like Winger's '80s movies, but they still garnered critical accolades from the likes of Roger Ebert and earned her an Oscar nomination to boot. Winger's career trajectory was seemingly settling into one of understated excellence, but her experience on a never-finished movie set made her reconsider her work in film.

In 1995, Winger was set to co-star alongside Johnny Depp and Marlon Brando in the movie "The Divine Rapture." She recounted to the Los Angeles Times that weeks into shooting the film in small-town Ireland, financing for the project fell through and the production was abandoned immediately. Winger was the only person on the film who stayed behind, ensuring that local workers got compensated for their services. She said of her diligence, "I didn't know about anyone else, but I wanted to be able to come home and sleep at night." The film was never completed and the Times reported that her brief time making "The Divine Rapture" sealed her disenchantment with Hollywood.

Debra Wingers' brutal honesty and candor about her career means she's deliberately avoided the press. In 2002, her then-agent Rick Nicita told the Los Angeles Times, "Debra doesn't always go down easy." Her outspokenness, even about her own films, has garnered Winger an unpredictable reputation in Hollywood. She's completely self-aware of her blunt opinions, telling The New York Times, "Speaking the truth has gotten me into more trouble than any other phase of my personality."

Winger has generally avoided interviews at many points in her career. She acknowledged that her reputation in Hollywood for being an unapologetic loudmouth is well-earned, admitting to The New York Times, "I've shot off my mouth in ways that are just not necessary and so I'm sorry about that. But mostly, I'm really not." Sometimes her most cutting statements came through in her silence, as when she refused to do press for "An Officer and a Gentleman," with The New York Times reporting that she objected to script changes and her treatment on the set. 

A high-profile Hollywood career can strain even the most well-adjusted family dynamic. Throughout the years, Debra Winger has chosen to live much of her personal and family life away from the spotlight, but she surprised the industry when she married actor Timothy Hutton in 1986. The couple welcomed son Noah in 1987, and after Winger and Hutton divorced in 1990, she spent much of her time at her upstate New York farm raising him. In a 1994 interview with The New York Times, Winger revealed that Noah was not attending school, and that she was instead splitting his time between home-schooling by her and a local arts program geared toward kids, where the identity of his famous mother had no bearing on his enrollment.

Winger married again in 1996, this time to actor Arliss Howard. Their blended family — consisting of Winger's son Noah, Howard's son Sam from a previous marriage, and their own son Babe — settled into a quiet family life. When she seemingly retired from Hollywood in the late '90s, it was partially due to prioritizing her family over life on a film set. She told The Guardian, "I had a new marriage, I wanted another child and it seemed ridiculous to run off for three months to do another film." These days, when Winger is not working, she's at her upstate New York farm with her family, simply stating to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, "I love to spend time with my husband and sons."

Like many legendary movie stars in recent years, Debra Winger has taken on roles in television. In the 2000s, Winger acted in the TV movies "Dawn Anna" and "Sometimes In April," but it wasn't until 2010 that she scored her first major TV role, playing Frances Greer in the HBO series "In Treatment." Since then, Winger has appeared in a number of small-screen projects, including "Patriot," "Mr. Corman," and "The Ranch." While most of her acting these days is on TV, she's not a fan of the medium itself.

Winger candidly confessed to Broadway.com that she didn't watch TV herself except for specific programs, adding, "We've lost television as a place that delivers true argument or dialogue." That being said, she is still curious about working on television projects, including mainstream sitcoms like "The Ranch." In the series, she played no-nonsense Maggie Bennett, mother to immature brothers Colt (Ashton Kutcher) and Rooster Bennett (Danny Masterson). For Winger to take a sitcom role in the later stages of her career might be surprising, but her response is, like the actor herself, very blunt and to-the-point: She hadn't done it before (via ET).

Debra Winger took a sabbatical from Hollywood filmmaking during the late '90s, but that doesn't mean she wasn't working. She traded in the soundstage for the theater, appearing in several American Repertory Theater productions, including "How I Learn To Drive" and "Ivanov." Since she was already working in the area, Winger decided to take on academia by serving as a teaching fellow in Harvard University's celebrated General Education 105 course, "The Literature of Social Reflection." The course's instructor, Robert Coles, praised Winger in The Harvard Crimson for her literary expertise and called her a "first-rate teaching fellow." Winger shared with the Los Angeles Times about her time at Harvard, "I never felt so alive. I'd never read in such a vibrant way. I can't compare it to anything except when I hear the film going through the camera."

Winger's way with words followed her from the university lecture hall to a major publishing deal. In 2008, she penned "Undiscovered," touted by Simon and Schuster as a book of "reminiscence, poetry, storytelling, and insightful observation" about her life. With Winger not bowing to the celebrity industrial complex to sell "Undiscovered," The Guardian reports that the book's word-of-mouth success was immensely satisfying to her. In addition to being a teacher and author, Winger voiced the audiobook version of Gloria Steinem's 2016 book, "My Life on the Road," and Tom Robbins' essay collection, "Wild Ducks Flying Backwards" (via Penguin Random House Audio).