Debra Winger Gives Discussion at JCCSF
Award-winning actress Debra Winger, best known for her film roles in movies such as An Officer and a Gentleman and Terms of Endearment, as well as her decision to turn her back on acting at the height of her career, will talk about her life and career at the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco (JCCSF) on Monday, June 15 at 8 p.m.
She was born Mary Debra Winger in Cleveland Heights, Ohio to a Jewish family. In the early 1970s she spent several years volunteering in a Kibbutz in Israel and serving in the Israel Defense Forces. After returning to the United States, she was involved in an automobile accident and 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.
Her 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. Winger was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress twice more: for Terms of Endearment in 1983, and for Shadowlands 1993, for which she also received her second BAFTA award nomination.
Her voice, digitally altered, was used by Steven Spielberg as that of the extra-terrestrial E.T. in 1982 though she was not credited in the film.
In 1995, she began a hiatus from the film industry, during which she spent a semester as a teaching fellow at Harvard University. In 2001, a critically acclaimed documentary film titled Searching for Debra Winger was made by Rosanna Arquette and released in 2002 after Winger returned to performing.
Other films include Legal Eagles, Made in Heaven, Everybody Wins, The Sheltering Sky, Leap of Faith, Black Widow, Betrayed, Wilder Napalm, A Dangerous Woman and Sometimes in April. She earned an Emmy Award nomination for her title role in the television film Dawn Anna in 2005, directed by her second husband, Arliss Howard.
In 1995, Winger performed in The Wizard of Oz in Concert: Dreams Come True, a musical performance of the popular story at Lincoln Center to benefit the Children's Defense Fund. The performance was originally broadcast on Turner Network Television (TNT), and issued on CD and video in 1996.
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