NEW YORK — She may be well versed in Tolstoy and James Agee these days, but Debra Winger would still feel just fine taking a ride on that mechanical bull. Debra Winger--remember her? If your memory span is short or you're under say, 30, you have every right not to. She was last on the screen in the very forgettable "Forget Paris" opposite Billy Crystal. That was six years ago.
"It's true you haven't seen me in a long time unless you go to the legitimate theater in Boston or you've been a student at Harvard," says the actress, who has reemerged as producer and co-star of "Big Bad Love," a small, offbeat film directed by, and starring, her husband, Arliss Howard.
FOR THE RECORD
Los Angeles Times Thursday March 7, 2002 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 A2 Desk 1 inches; 28 words Type of Material: Correction
Actress' marriage--Debra Winger and her husband, actor-director Arliss Howard, met in 1991 and married in 1996. A Sunday Calendar story incorrectly characterized the length of their marriage.
For the Record
Los Angeles Times Sunday March 10, 2002 Home Edition Calendar Part F Page 2 Calendar Desk 1 inches; 29 words Type of Material: Correction
Actress' marriage--Debra Winger and her husband, actor-director Arliss Howard, met in 1991 and married in 1996. A March 3 Sunday Calendar story incorrectly characterized the length of their marriage.
FOR THE RECORD
Los Angeles Times Thursday March 14, 2002 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 A2 Desk 1 inches; 21 words Type of Material: Correction
Director's name--The director of the film "Everybody Wins" is Karel Reisz. His first name was misspelled in a March 3 story about actress Debra Winger.
For the Record
Los Angeles Times Sunday March 17, 2002 Home Edition Calendar Part F Page 2 Calendar Desk 1 inches; 21 words Type of Material: Correction
Director's name--The director of the film 'Everybody Wins' is Karel Reisz. His first name was misspelled in a March 3 story about actress Debra Winger.
It's based on the short stories of Mississippi writer Larry Brown, and features Paul LeMat as Howard's war buddy, Rosanna Arquette as a funeral home heiress and Angie Dickinson in what could only be described as the Gena Rowlands role. But clearly it is Winger, still charismatic after all these years, who has the best chance of bringing anyone into the theater--if for no other reason than to see what the heck has become of her.
Well, rest easy. The navy-blue eyes are still as expressive as ever. The velvet croak is intact. As is the voluptuous body that memorably rode that bull in her 1980 movie breakthrough, "Urban Cowboy." OK, she's looking close to her almost 47 years, but she doesn't seem to mind. Nor does she look back at her quiet exit from mainstream Hollywood for most of the '90s with anything resembling regret. She just got fed up with the lack of interesting offers and made other choices.
"I didn't like announce my retirement, but I didn't look back and I was busy all the time," says the three-time Oscar nominee ("Terms of Endearment," "An Officer and a Gentleman," "Shadowlands"), sitting in the offices of IFC, which is distributing the film. She's dressed in black slacks and sweater, her auburn hair brushed out. "Time accelerates as you get older, and now when I hear it's been six years, it doesn't feel like it. I mean, I had a baby, my mom passed, I taught, I did two plays. I lived my life."
Still, to those around her and the industry in general, it felt as if she had said good riddance. "I realize that I'd created this system of roadblocks around me, so that even if there was some good material, it probably wouldn't have gotten to me," she concedes. "I wasn't reading and I wasn't out there looking. My agent bugged me for about a year, then he saw I was doing my thing and I was happy."
That agent, Rick Nicita, says that after 20 years, he knows his client well: "It's always been about the process more than the end result with Debra, and I just wouldn't send her material that would lead to an experience I knew she wouldn't enjoy. There has been an assumption she didn't want to be in the business, and maybe having her back on screen will correct that assumption."
Nicita admits that "Debra doesn't always go down easily," referring to her sometimes tempestuous behavior. In fact, some might have believed the wild-child leanings--difficult on the set and a lover of some of the finer vices in life--ultimately led to her disappearance.
"I definitely think I filled a slot," she says. "Nobody could do everything they said I did or else I'd be dead. And there always seems to be a slot for the Hollywood bad girl. As for being tough on set, I spoke my mind and it wasn't gender correct. Those were the days that when the male star went to his trailer, it was because he must be getting into a really intense scene. If a girl went to her trailer, she was having her period. I kind of knew it at the time and didn't care, as long as I got to do what I wanted to do."
Part of the erratic behavior stemmed from a near-fatal accident (she fell off the back of a truck) when she was 17. "Once you've come up against death, you're part of a club," she says. "In my 20s, I went into its negative side for a while where I felt immortal, that I could do anything, live crazily. Then it started to resonate in a good way."
At that point, she says, she started to get more picky in her choices, and during much of her 30s was seen (or not) in less commercial fare, ("Betrayal," "Everybody Wins," "Sheltering Sky"), working with foreign directors such as Costa-Gavras, Karl Reisz and Bernardo Bertolucci. She was responding to an independent spirit unhampered by the money side of the film business.
Her growing disenchantment was confirmed during the unhappy experience she and Robert Redford endured on "Legal Eagles." ("We were like POWs together," she says, laughing.) The death knell was in 1995 when she, Marlon Brando and Johnny Depp were 21/2 weeks into shooting a film called "The Divine Rapture" in a tiny town in Ireland when the producers lost their financing, closed shop, and everyone but Winger was gone within hours.
