She won three Oscar nominations, starred in some of the most memorable films of the Eighties and was acclaimed as one of America’s finest actresses. But word spread around the Hollywood studios that she was “difficult”.
Certain directors and actors labelled her troublesome, and some 10 years ago Debra Winger faded from public view. Her disappearance was so complete that she was the subject of a documentary, Searching for Debra Winger.
Now, however, the 53-yearold actress is back, facing the cameras again, although she insists she never went away, she just did other things.
She is still acerbically outspoken, sexily attractive and highly intelligent, and has every intention of making her opinions known; although, looking back, she realises that she could have been more flexible in her dealings with the directors and actors she did not get along with.
“When I was younger I probably didn’t understand something basic about tact, but I think it kept faint-hearted people at arm’s distance and that’s not such a bad thing, because life is short and I know the kind of people I want to work with,” she says. She chose the high-profile, celebrity-filled Toronto Film Festival for her reappearance in the public eye, and seemed slightly bemused at the attention being paid to celebrities as opposed to the films in which they appear.
“I find it sort of hair-raising,” she says. “At this convention — and to me it seems like a convention — you see that the celebrities are pulling the films along with them to hold them up. It used to be that the film was the thing - the film opened and we showed up to support it. Now it’s all about the red carpet and celebrity. This stupidity about celebrity is just crazy, don’t you think? The actress was in Toronto to support Rachel Getting Married, an angst-ridden comedy-drama directed by Jonathan Demme about longsimmering family tensions surfacing when friends and family gather for a wedding.
Anne Hathaway plays a recovering drug addict who returns home for her sister Rachel’s wedding. Winger plays Abbey, the girls’ mother “By the way, this is a small film, not a big blockbuster, and I think it’s lovely that audiences are liking it and it looks like it will have a life, but it could have gone the other way.
I mean, it’s not a big-big movie for me.” “I don’t know what people mean by me being ‘back’,” she says irritably. “I’ve been acting all along. I understand that I haven’t been in people’s viewers, but acting has never not been a part of my life, just more time in between and less high-profile.” Winger’s showbusiness career began when she was 17 and took a job as a troll at a California amusement park.
While changing into costume in the back of a truck, the truck unexpectedly moved, throwing Winger onto her head and she was in a coma for three days.