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Entertainment
Desperately seeking Debra
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It is the mystery of her personality that has kept Debra Winger away from her admirers for so long, says PRADEEP SEBASTIAN, about the gorgeous actress, who has made a comeback.
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THREE VERY good reasons to see ``Big Bad Love." Debra Winger, Debra Winger and Debra Winger. Just when you thought she had pulled off the biggest disappearing act in Hollywood, here she is in a new movie. Her first in six years.
But whatever happened to Debra Winger all these years? Why did we see so little of this fabulous actress with those large, beautiful opal eyes, gorgeous, goofy smile and sexy, husky voice? Difficult to work with, argumentative and wild, say her directors.
Movie magazines bring up her alcoholism. Critics say she chose all the wrong roles. Winger herself admits to all this but refuses to say really why. I think it is the mystery of Debra Winger's personality that has kept her away from us these many years. What else would make an actress of her gifts and promise throw it all away?
When Debra Winger debuted in the 1980s, she was proclaimed as a great new talent, the best of her generation, the star of the 80s. But it didn't quite happen. It didn't happen because she didn't want it. Did not want to be a star.
Refused to prove to the world that she was the great actress everyone said she was. She didn't work at being the most admired actress of her generation the way Meryl Streep and Jodie Foster have, nor did she work her way up to stardom the way Michelle Pfeiffer and Julia Roberts did.
Debra Winger with Shirley McLaine in ``Terms of Endearment".
I can't help but admire someone who would wilfully not fulfil her destiny, her promise. Why she would not or did not will be a mystery, of course, perhaps even to her.
In terms of what she actually did with her life is on record — dropped out of film acting (she thought it too phoney and felt a hypocrite for staying in the system) and turned to theatre, raised her children, enrolled in a literature course at Harvard — but all this still does not explain why she chose to disappear.
The movies that launched her — ``Urban Cowboy," ``An Officer and a Gentleman" and ``Terms of Endearment" — showed us how sexy, pretty, tough and funny she was but they didn't give us a clue to how intelligent, vulnerable and compelling she would be in ``Mike's Murder," ``Black Widow," ``Everybody Wins," ``The Sheltering Sky" and ``Shadowlands." Which is why these five films will be the essential Debra Winger films. ``Mike's Murder" and ``Everybody Wins" (from an Arthur Miller script) are two very fine but underrated movies.
``Shadowlands", where she is the feisty, dying American poet Joy Gresham is the one she will be remembered for. It brims with intelligence, passion, warmth, and charm and above all a kind of aching fragility and fierce honesty that only she can bring to a performance.
Watching it, I always forget that it is Debra Winger — so completely wrapped up I am in her Joyce-character, as she outwits and outdoes the great Cambridge don, the beloved author of the Narnia chronicles and Christian apologist in conversation, wit, poetry, love and finally, in death.
Still, it is all rather sad: all those years that she lost. Her chances now of getting great roles are slim (unless one is written for her) and it looks like she'll never win an Oscar though she has been nominated three times.
Her disappearance at the height of her career has now inspired fellow actress Rosanna Arquette to make a documentary (screened recently at the Cannes film festival) called ``Searching for Debra Winger''. Arquette interviewed various actresses about "the pressures they face as women working in the entertainment industry."
Actress-director Rosanna Arquette (centre), her sister, actress Patricia Arquette (right) and actress and Jury member Sharon Stone (left), as they arrive for the screening of the film, ``Searching for Debra Winger.''
Winger came very close to getting back to acting in 1995 when she was to star opposite Marlon Brando and Johnny Depp in a film that never got made.
Disenchanted, she once again turned reclusive until ``Big Bad Love'' came along. ``Big Bad Love'', based on the stories of American southern writer Larry Brown and directed by Winger's husband, Arliss Howard, is the story of a bitter war veteran who wants more than anything to write. The rejection slips keep piling up but the bruised writer, played by Howard himself, refuses to give up writing.
When financing for the film collapsed, Winger and Howard bravely put up the money themselves to get it made. The result is an uneven but bold, unconventional film about the life of a writer. In a sense, Arliss Howard's film is to writers what Ed Harris' "Pollock" was to painters.
Winger, playing his ex-wife, watches the writer destroy himself. It isn't a knockout performance or anything (that just wouldn't be her style) but she's been away for so long that it is a pleasure to see her again.
I never tire of watching her because she has a compelling honesty I have seen in few actresses.
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