Mary Debra Winger was born on May 16, 1955, in Cleveland Heights, Ohio. The daughter of a meat packer and an office manager, she has a brother, Marc, and a sister, Marla. For part of her childhood her family lived in Israel, and as a teenager Winger served in the Israeli army, getting through her military career without incident. On returning to the States, however, Winger was less fortunate. While working as a troll at the Six Flags Magic Mountain Amusement Park, she was involved in an accident that left her in a coma for three days and deprived her of her sight. Doctors advised that her blindness would probably be permanent, and she spent the time thinking about what she had wanted to do with her life. When, after ten months, her sight returned, she moved to Hollywood to become an actress.
Winger's first acting role was in the teenage sex comedy Slumber Party '57, alongside Janet Wood, Noelle North, and Bridget Holloman. The film went largely unnoticed, but it did help her to secure the role of Drusilla, the younger sister of heroine Diana, in The New Adventures of Wonder Woman. The show ran for three seasons and Winger attracted a strong fan following, though she came to dislike the show, especially working with Lynda Carter (who, for her part, maintains that they got along well), and spent much of her money on lawyers to get her out of her contract.
Once free, Winger took further small television roles before breaking into film property with 1980's Urban Cowboy, in which she starred opposite John Travolta, receiving a BAFTA nomination. This led to a role opposite Richard Gere in An Officer and a Gentleman, which garnered her an Oscar nomination, as did the following year's Terms of Endearment, with Shirley MacLaine, Jack Nicholson, Danny De Vito, and Jeff Daniels.
Winger's film career was complicated by her notorious inability to get along with her co-stars. Her hatred of Richard Gere was well publicized. Winger was also highly critical of Robert Redford, with whom she made Legal Eagles, and of Steve Martin, with whom she appeared in Leap of Faith. Winger also gained a reputation for turning down roles in successful films, such as Michelle Pfeiffer's role in The Fabulous Baker Boys and Glenn Close's role in Fatal Attraction. Nevertheless, Winger has made memorable appearances in several major movies, including Black Widow, with Theresa Russell and Dennis Hopper; The Sheltering Sky, with John Malkovich and Timothy Spall; and Shadowlands, with Sir Anthony Hopkins. Winger later received several BAFTA and Oscar nominations. She also contributed the voice of the eponymous alien in Steven Spielberg's classic E.T. - The Extra Terrestrial. She retired from acting in the mid-1990s to spend more time with her family, but has subsequently made a comeback, appearing in TV movies and in Eulogy, with Hank Azaria and Zooey Deschanel. In the interim, Debra Winger was among the subjects of a documentary made by Rosanna Arquette about actresses unable to find roles after turning forty - a documentary entitled Searching for Debra Winger.
Winger has been married twice, first to actor Timothy Hutton, who starred in Kinsey with Liam Neeson and Laura Linney. The couple had one son together, Noah. Her second marriage was to Arliss Howard, who starred in Amistad with Morgan Freeman and Nigel Hawthorne. Howard and Winger had another son, Gideon. She has also been romantically linked to Nick Nolte and Senator Bob Kerrey.
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