The star of 'Officer and a Gentleman' and 'Twilight Lands' has just turned 67.
In 1995, an actress in the prime of her career, three times nominated for an Oscar, recognized by the public, adored by the critics, and respected (and often hated) by her professional colleagues, said goodbye to the industry with a silence so thunderous that its echo still resounds.
A little over twenty-five years ago, Debra Winger, who at that time was in her forties and had second motherhood, exchanged sets for Harvard University, acting for teaching and the unsuccessful search for roles that were no longer written for her, for the peace of mind of feeling happier than she had ever been in Hollywood.
Without meaning to, Ella Winger had become the symbol of an endemic problem in the film industry: the lack of relevant roles for women. Does it ring a bell? Is not a new problem. It exists today when we hear it from stars like Helen Mirren, it existed in 1995 and also in 1962 when Bette Davis, one of the undisputed legends of Hollywood, published the following ad in Variety magazine: "Mother of three children aged 10, 11 and 15 years old, divorced. The US. Thirty years of experience as a film actress. I keep mobility; kinder than they say. She offers herself steady work in Hollywood (Broadway experience). Bette Davis, att. Martin Baum, G.A.C. References".
What explanation could there be for an actress in whom Davis herself saw herself, and whom the implacable critic Pauline Kael considered "one of the main reasons to go to see movies in the eighties", to stop aspiring to the best papers?
Winger has never talked about it and has an interesting theory. There are no movies for women of a certain age because there are no longer actresses of a certain age. One fine day she realized that all her classmates were suddenly ten years younger than her. "Michelle Pfeiffer and I started together, we were about the same age, now she looks like my little sister," she told New York Magazine in 2001.
She did not want to join this ritual of passage and preferred simply to pick up the cards from her table and wait for better times. But despite her significant and transcendent decision, she does not consider it a dry and radical act, but rather a sum of consequences. It's not Greta Garbo screaming "I want to be alone" and stealing her old age from the screen as she locks herself in a Fifth Avenue apartment. And that is why he was surprised that in 2002 Rosana Arquette made her flag in the documentary Looking for Debra Winger. A piece was attended by actresses such as Whoopi Goldberg, Meg Ryan, Jane Fonda, Sharon Stone, and Debra herself and focused attention on the difficulty for women "of a certain age" to find relevant roles. The actress Debra had given way to the symbol Debra.
And what had Debra been like as an actress? Electric, magnetic, and unconventional. As there is nothing conventional in her biography.
Mary Debra Winger was born into a Jewish family of strong religious convictions, which led her to spend her adolescence in a kibbutz in Israel and perform compulsory military service. On her return to America, she suffered a spectacular traffic accident. She fell out of the back of a van while working at a theme park,** causing her to lose her vision and mobility for a year.** She says that was the moment she decided to be an actress, but knowing that her name is a tribute to Debra Paget, her parents' favorite star, perhaps we can think that she was destined for it.
Success came quickly thanks to his intervention in the Wonder Woman television series, but the small screen was not the goal of Winger who ruled out the possibility of participating in the remake that was offered to him today he affirms that he spent more time trying to get out of the series than in the series itself. A recurring story since in a recent interview she told with a laugh that she had never slept with anyone for a role, but she would have done it to stop doing it.
In 1980 she came to Urban Cowboy by chance, Sissy Spacek had to leave the project, and even though the legendary producer Robert Evans opposed her hiring him as he considered her unattractive (insert boos) the insistence of director James Bridges kept her in the project ( this may be the only time someone has fought over her and not with her).
Her role as the wife of John Travolta, a young Texan who lives in an underworld of outdated cowboys and mechanical bulls (a ridiculously ridiculous MacGuffin only surpassed by Stallone's wrestling duels in I the Falcon), marked the first notch in the industry of an actress with a special energy and a strange capacity for seduction.
In her next success, the stark, iconic, and grossing Officer and a gentleman there was also controversy due to her alleged lack of attractiveness. One of the Paramount executives, the producer Don Simpson, affirmed that she was not very "F-" and one day even offered her some pills against fluid retention since he saw her "excessively swollen" on screen. We assume that Don didn't know her history of military service.
The unquestionable triumph of the film, full of unforgettable phrases (or don't we all remember what is the only thing in Texas?), scenes later plagiarized ad nauseam, and the memorable song by Joe Cocker and Jennifer Warnes, we don't know if it made change Simpson's mind, but it did cause millions of viewers to fall in love with Winger and Gere. Two actors whose talent is comparable to their difficult character led the film to be present on all lists of problematic shoots. They both loathe the movie that launched them to stardom and says they would erase it from her career without a doubt. Despite so much hostility a couple of years ago we could see them together and smiling at the Rome Festival and for a few seconds it was as strange as seeing Karpov and Kasparov dancing a waltz.
Of Officer and Gentleman, he took a bad memory and an Oscar nomination. Like the following, the great winner of 1983 The Strength of Endearment, which won five Oscars out of eleven nominations and which generated a new string of rumors that spoke of Debra and Shirley MacLaine (mother and daughter in fiction) in a constant fight much to the delight of Jack Nicholson. It seems proven that during one of the scenes between MacLaine and Nicholson, Debra was under the bed licking the feet of Warren Beatty's spiritual sister. We already said that it was not conventional.
But the public ignores the intra-story of the filming and limits itself to extolling a woman who fits the new feminine standards: active, confident, and defiant. With the deep voice of a noir star (she was part of the mix of sounds that gave voice to her friend Steven Spielberg's "E.T.") and eyes of an impossible gray capable of reflecting the most complete range of emotions.
Eyes capable of competing with Redford's in the failed (but delicious) Dangerously Together, magnetize Theresa Russell in The Case of the Black Widow, deceive a racist leader and loving father Tom Berenger in the essential The Trail of Betrayal or cover herself with iconic tortoiseshell glasses in Bernardo Bertolucci's poetic film The Sheltering Sky, in which she gave life to a role for which she seemed destined, the tormented and stormy Jane Bowles.
And in 1993 came his third Oscar nomination thanks to Shadowlands, the story of the love between the poet Joey Gresham and C.S. Lewis, author of The Chronicles of Narnia. So small, subtle, and evocative that it became one of the year's big surprises and one of Debra's favorite movies that she, for the first time, seemed to find some reassurance with her film partner Sir Anthony Hopkins.
Gone were the legendary fights and insults exchanged with Richard Gere, Shirley MacLaine, or Ivan Reitman, the fights on the set of Everyone Wins, his contempt for John Malkovich, whom he contemptuously called a "catwalk model" or his hasty abandonment of Ellas. they give the coup after learning that Madonna was going to participate in it.
Forget about Paris, her last film before closing the doors to Hollywood is just an ill-fated attempt by Billy Cristal to resurrect the success of When He Met Sally. A decaffeinated imitation of comedy that does not deserve to be the last leading role of such an important actress.
The work that she came after her are small performances in minor roles, generally associated with the career of her second husband, actor, and director Arliss Howard whom she married after divorcing fellow actor Timothy Hutton. And television series like the Netflix comedy The Ranch, but no matter how small her project is, her presence always generates a buzz because we have been longing for her talent for two decades and hoping that Hollywood will find a place for her.
