Debra Winger

About Debra Winger

Debra Winger (born May 16, 1955) is an Academy Award-nominated American actress.

Winger was born Mary Debra Winger in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, the daughter of Ruth (née Felder), an office manager, and Robert Winger, a meat packer. She was raised in an Orthodox Jewish family. In the early 1970s, she spent several months at Beit Zera, a kibbutz in Israel. She has stated publicly and with amusement that the Internet has a growing "snowball" of claims that she had been part of a kibbutz in Israel, whereas she says she was merely on a typical Israeli youth program that visited the kibbutz. After returning to the United States, she was involved in an automobile accident and suffered a cerebral hemorrhage as a result. She was left partially paralyzed and blind for ten months, although she was initially told that she would never see again. With time on her hands to think about her life, she decided that, if she recovered, she would move to California and become an actress.

Winger's first acting role was as "Debbie" in the 1976 sexploitation film Slumber Party '57. Her next role was as Diana Prince's younger sister Drusilla (Wonder Girl) in the Wonder Woman television series. Winger got her first starring role in Urban Cowboy in 1980, opposite John Travolta, for which she received a BAFTA award nomination. In 1982, she co-starred with Nick Nolte in Cannery Row and opposite Richard Gere in An Officer and a Gentleman, for which she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress.