Debra Winger

16 May, 1955

| 1.63 m

Actress

Producer

Additional Crew

Biography

Debra Winger

Mary Debra Winger was born May 16, 1955 in Cleveland, Ohio, to Ruth (Felder), an office manager, and Robert Jack Winger, a meat packer. She is from a Jewish family (originally from Austria-Hungary and the Russian Empire). Her maternal grandparents called her Mary, while her parents called her Debra (her father named her Debra after his favorite actress, Debra Paget). The family moved to California when Debra was five. She fell in love with acting in high school but kept it a secret from her family. She was a precocious teenager, having graduated high school at an early age of 15. She enrolled in college, majoring in criminology. She worked part-time in the local amusement park when she got thrown from a truck and suffered serious injuries and went temporarily blind for several months. She was in the hospital when she vowed to pursue her passion for acting.After she recovered, she abandoned college and studied acting. Like any struggling actor, she did commercials and guest-starred on 70s TV shows like Task Force: Part I (1976) and Wonder Woman (1975), where she performed as Diana's little sister, Wonder Girl. She also made her feature film debut in the embarrassing soft-core porn film, Slumber Party '57 (1976). (Years later on Inside the Actors Studio (1994), host James Lipton asked her to name her first film, and she refused to answer him.) Her next two films, French Postcards (1979) and Dzięki Bogu już piątek (1978), did absolutely nothing for her career. When Sissy Spacek said no to playing the character Sissy in Miejski kowboj (1980), almost every young actress in Hollywood pursued the role. Debra won the role over a then-unknown Michelle Pfeiffer and gave a star-making performance as John Travolta's wife. Her handling of the mechanical bull made her a new kind of sex symbol. She would always remain grateful to her director James Bridges for threatening to quit the film if the studio didn't cast her. However, she followed it up with a flop, Ulica Nadbrzeżna (1982). But, she became part...

Movies

Follows hard-to-please Aurora looking for love and her daughter's family problems.

A young man must complete his work at a Navy Officer Candidate School to become an aviator, with the help of a tough Gunnery Sergeant and his new girlfriend.

A young woman who has been in and out of rehab for the past ten years returns home for the weekend for her sister's wedding.

The story of a high school coach and the developmentally challenged man who he took under his wing.

A woman's life is turned upside down when her criminal parents invite an outsider to join them on a major heist they're planning.

C.S. Lewis, a world-renowned Christian theologian, writer and professor, leads a passionless life until he meets spirited poet Joy Gresham from the U.S.

Bud is a young man from the country who learns about life and love in a Houston bar.

Fake faith healer Jonas Nightingale is stranded in a small town where he finds he can't fool all of the people all of the time.

An American couple travel abroad to revitalize their relationship. But as the trip drags on, their attempt at recovering what they once had seems futile.

Mickey, an NBA referee, meets Ellen, an American airline official, in Paris. It develops into a relationship of ups and downs.

A New York district attorney works and flirts with his adversary and her kooky artist client, who is on trial for a murder she didn't commit.

Federal investigator Alexandra Barnes tracks down gold-digging woman Catherine Peterson, who moves from husband to husband in order to kill them and collect the inheritance.

An FBI agent posing as a combine driver becomes romantically involved with a Midwest farmer who lives a double life as a white supremacist.