Still on Her Terms

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.

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.

"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."