Debra Winger of 'Rachel Getting Married' is back on the radar

FOR A period in the early '80s, no one could do it like Debra Winger.

She was just 25 years old when she made "Urban Cowboy," and her emotionally ferocious performance sent shock waves through the movie world. In the film, when she asks costar John Travolta if he's a "real cowboy," audiences could immediately grasp what Winger was all about: Here was the kind of woman who craved the truth and had to seek it out.

In 1982, she gave Richard Gere all he could handle in "An Officer and a Gentleman." There was an Oscar nomination, then another for "Terms of Endearment," in 1983. However, as the decade faded and Winger moved through her mid-30s, and then into her 40s, she drifted away from Hollywood, eventually retreating to her farm in upstate New York.

The considerable legend that surrounded Winger deepened. What was going on? Had she quit the spotlight for good?

Not quite. Turns out, she was just recalibrating her internal compass. Now, in her early 50s, , Winger has decided to return to the game, but it's clear that she doesn't have a master plan -- or need one. This is improvisation for her, and although she's not entirely comfortable with it, she's going with the flow and offering up some impressive work.

For starters, she's become an author. Her first book, a memoir titled "Undiscovered," was published a few months ago by Simon & Schuster. And she's back on the big screen, appearing alongside Anne Hathaway in director Jonathan Demme's "Rachel Getting Married," a daring, dysfunctional-family drama that already has Oscar buzz building around Hathaway's performance as Kym, a recovering drug addict trying to redeem herself in time for her sister's wedding. .

Welcome to the new Winger, a whole lot mellower but still as artistically uncompromising as the old Winger. You could call it a comeback, but Winger won't, because she hates the term. Maybe "existential struggle" would be more appropriate. "That's the thing about showbiz these days," she says. "Nothing is the same. So what am I coming back to? I'm just living my life and looking to work as an actress again."

In "Rachel Getting Married," Winger plays Kym and Rachel's mother, Abby, divorced from the girls' father (Bill Irwin) but living nearby and participating in the raucous, music-drenched nuptials that Demme has created out of Jenny Lumet's script. Next to Kym, Abby is the most damaged member of her fractured clan; actually, they share each other's damage, at a profound level. It's a condition that achieves violent display in a critical scene between Winger and Hathaway, and both actresses, the veteran and the up-and-comer, bring it and bring it hard.