Debra Winger, Whose Performances In The 1980’s Are Etched In Our Hearts, Still Looks Stunning At 67
In a classic love story, Naval Officer Zack Mayo grabbed factory worker Paula by the arms and dragged her out of her workplace.
Fans all over the world wish they were Debra Winger.
Fans of daydreaming held the famous scene from the romantic film An Officer and a Gentleman as the standard for all love stories. Richard Gere played Officer Zack Mayo, the good-looking hero in navy blues.
Many people wanted to be Debra Winger because she worked with Hollywood’s hottest guys.
Winger, who is 67 years old now, is still as beautiful as ever. In the past few years, Winger has shared pictures of herself on Instagram. At first, she had brown hair, but now it’s naturally curly gray.
Winger’s first lead job was in the 1976 movie Slumber Party ’57.
This led to a part on the hit TV show Wonder Woman (1979), where she played Drusilla, Diana Prince’s (Lynda Carter) younger sister and Wonder Woman.
Winger was asked to show up more often, but she said no because she was afraid of being stuck in that part.
There were no doubts about that choice; the rising star would have a great time in the early 1980s.
At the height of her young career, she was nominated for many Academy Awards and Golden Globes for her roles in three classic 1980s movies.
In 1980, she co-starred in Urban Cowboy with John Travolta, whose smooth dance moves in Saturday Night Fever (1977) and Grease (1988) were making fans go crazy.
She also played Paula in An Officer and a Gentleman (1982) and Emma, a dying young woman whose mother Aurora (Shirley MacLaine) was too controlling, in Terms of Endearment (1983).
Even though Winger was a big star, she took a short break from acting to save time. People are still guessing why she left Hollywood more than 40 years after she became famous.
There are a lot of rumors going around about Winger’s fights with her co-stars.
Many people say that Winger had enough of the beautiful Gere on the set, even though fans couldn’t get enough of him.
“An Actor and a Gentleman,” a book written by co-star Louis Gossett Jr., who played Sgt. Emil Foley, was excerpted on ABC News: “The onscreen chemistry between the two of them was terrific, but it was a different story once the camera was turned off. They couldn’t have stayed farther apart from each other.”
Gossett also says that Winger didn’t like Gere’s playing and wrote that Winger once called Gere “a brick wall.” She also called the movie’s director, Taylor Hackford, an “animal.”
It wasn’t just the people in that movie that made her angry.
Both in real life and as Emma, Winger was a free spirit. She also had problems with MacLaine, who was a glamorous, strange, and experienced veteran.
They became friends after their first meeting.
According to MacLaine in an interview with People, “To see how my character would feel I was wearing all my leftover movie-star fur coats,” MacLaine said in an interview with People. “There was Debra dressed in combat boots and a miniskirt…I thought, ‘Oh my goodness.’”
People writes, “Indeed, the set became the source of Hollywood’s most relished rumors. Winger wanted top billing. One reportedly slugged the other.”
Then, when both of them were up for best actress at the Oscars, they were put up against each other.
MacLaine took the prize home and said in her speech, “I deserve this!”
Winger says she “pushed the pause button” on Hollywood for personal reasons, not work-related ones.
“The parts that were coming, I wasn’t interested in. I’d already done that or I’d already felt that. I needed to be challenged. My life challenged me more than the parts, so I dove into it fully,” Winger told People.
Following her role in the 1995 romantic comedy Forget Paris with Billy Crystal, Winger took a break for six years.
At that point, she went to New York City and began dating actor Arliss Howard. In 1996, they got married.
Their son, Gideon Babe, was born in 1997. She is also Howard’s wife and Sam is his son from a previous marriage.
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She is also the mother of another child, Noah Hutton, whom she had with her first husband, Timothy Hutton, from 1986 to 1990.
She appeared once more in the 2001 film Big Bad Love, which her husband both directed and produced.
She co-starred with Debra Winger and Rosanna Arquette. Winger’s next movie was Searching for Debra Winger in 2002.
Arquette tries to find out why Winger stopped working at the height of her career by directing the documentary.
In 2008, Winger got a big break with parts in Rachel Getting Married with Anne Hathaway, The Lovers (2017), and Kajillionaire (2020), a crime comedy.
In 2021, she was in the anthology drama film With/In, Volume two, in the scene called “Her Own.” Her husband, who also plays in the movie, wrote and directed it.
“I don’t know what Hollywood is. I’m living under the freaking sign now, and I just stare at it and laugh. Los Angeles is a place, but the idea of Hollywood doesn’t really exist for me,” Winger said, adding, “…although there must be some in-crowds that I just don’t know about.”
