In a timeless tale of romance, Naval Officer Zack Mayo swept factory worker Paula into his arms and carried her from her workplace, leaving fans everywhere wishing they were the beautiful Debra Winger.
The legendary scene in the romantic drama an Officer and a Gentleman–where Richard Gere played Officer Zack Mayo, the handsome hero in navy whites–became the benchmark of love stories for daydreaming fans.
Acting alongside Hollywood’s hottest men, Debra Winger was the envy of many.
Today, Winger, 67, is as beautiful as ever. In the past few years, Winger has posted photos herself on Instagram, first with brown hair and now to a natural wavy gray.
Winger’s first starring role was in the 1976 film Slumber Party ‘57, which led to a part on the hit TV series Wonder Woman (1979), where she played Drusilla, the younger sister to Lynda Carter’s Diana Prince/Wonder Woman. Winger was asked to appear more often but concerned she’d be typecast by that role, she declined.
There were no regrets for that decision, the early ‘80s would be prosperous for the rising star.
At the height of her young career, she received numerous nods from the Academy and Golden Globes for performances in three iconic movies of the 1980’s.
In 1980, she starred in Urban Cowboy, with John Travolta, who at the time was driving fans wild with his smooth dance moves in Saturday Night Fever (1977) and Grease (1988); as Paula in an Officer and a Gentleman (1982) and in Terms of Endearment (1983), where she played Emma, a dying young woman with an over-bearing mother, Aurora, played by Shirley MacLaine.
Despite her huge success, Winger, carving hours from her acting schedule, took a mini Hollywood hiatus, and more than four decades after her rise to stardom, speculation of why she left is still circulating.
Most of these rumours revolve around the feuds that Winger had with her co-stars.
Though fans couldn’t get enough of the handsome Gere, it’s been widely reported that Winger had enough of him on the set.
According to an excerpt published on ABC News from the book, “An Actor and a Gentleman,” by co-star, Louis Gossett Jr., who played Sgt. Emil Foley: “The onscreen chemistry between the two of them was terrific, but it was a different story once the camera was turned off. They couldn’t have stayed farther apart from each other.”
Gossett also claims that Winger didn’t think much of Gere’s acting and wrote that she once described Gere as “a brick wall.” And, the film’s director, Taylor Hackford, whom she also did not likе, she referred to as “animal.”
It wasn’t only people on that film that ruffled her feathers.
Winger, a free spirit in real life and in her role as Emma, also clashed with the prolific MacLaine, a glamourous, eccentric and seasoned veteran.
Their first meeting set the stage for their relationship.
“To see how my character would feel I was wearing all my leftover movie-star fur coats,” MacLaine said in an interview with People. “There was Debra dressed in combat boots and a miniskirt…I thought, ‘Oh my goodness.’”
People writes, “Indeed, the set became the source of Hollywood’s most relished rumors. Winger wanted top billing. One reportedly slugged the other.”
And then, the women were pitted against each other in the Oscars when they were both nominated for best actress.
MacLaine, taking the trophy home, said in her acceptance speech, “I deserve this!”
Rumors aside, Winger insists she “pushed the pause button” on Hollywood for personal reasons and not professional.
“The parts that were coming, I wasn’t interested in. I’d already done that or I’d already felt that. I needed to be challenged. My life challenged me more than the parts, so I dove into it fully,” Winger told People.
After starring in the 1995 romcom Forget Paris with Billy Crystal, Winger took a six-year break.
In that time, she moved to New York City and shifted her focus to actor Arliss Howard, whom she married in 1996. The pair have a son, Gideon Babe, who was born in 1997, and she is stepmother to Sam, Howard’s son from a previous marriage. She also has another biological child, Noah Hutton, whom she mothered while married to her first husband, Timothy Hutton (1986 to 1990).
She reappeared in the 2001 film Big Bad Love, that was directed and produced by her husband, who also co-starred alongside Winger and Rosanna Arquette, who’s next project was 2002 film Searching for Debra Winger. As director of the documentary, Arquette attempts to answer why Winger temporarily аbаndоned her career at peak performance.
Winger gained some momentum with roles in Rachel Getting Married (2008) with Anne Hathaway, the 2017 romcom The Lovers, and the crime-comedy, Kajillionaire (2020).
In 2021, she was in With/In, Volume two of the anthological drama film, in the segment Her Own, which is written and directed by her husband, who also co-stars.
“I don’t know what Hollywood is. I’m living under the freaking sign now, and I just stare at it and laugh. Los Angeles is a place, but the idea of Hollywood doesn’t really exist for me,” Winger said, adding, “…although there must be some in-crowds that I just don’t know about.”
We can’t imagine a Hollywood without Debra Winger and we hope she soon gets to take home an Academy Award ! What are your favorite Winger movies?
My Neighbor Was Complaining That I Went Out Bra-Less, I Responded With a Petty Revenge
Sometimes, our relationship with our neighbors may be just epic. There’re people who dislike literally everything, and they may add a grain of salt to our lives by their permanent claims. Such thing happened to our today’s heroine, who wrote a letter to our editorial to tell us about an absurd claim from her neighbor. The woman, however, never lost her temper and provided her neighbor with an epic feedback that she will probably not be able to forget.
A woman wrote to us to tell her, nearly dramatic, story.
A young woman, 20, has written a letter to our editorial. She told us about an incident that happened to her recently, and she revealed how she handled it, in a very unusual way. The woman began her story, saying, that she lives in a college dorm and their accommodation is arranged in a way that they have all-female floors.
The woman revealed that, by some reason, she has always been quarreling with her neighbors, who are her fellow groupmates. They live next door to her, and they have always been complaining about everything and anything.
She wrote, «Sometimes, it really looked like these 4 ladies hated me, for nothing. I barely talked to them, and we hadn’t had anything in common with them. I can’t remember doing anything wrong to them, but they would still always tease me and complain about me to our principals. I tried to remain calm, always ignoring their remarks and complaints, until one day.»
The woman faced the most absurd claim in her life from her dorm neighbors.
The young lady goes on with her story, saying, that in that group of people, who were permanently dissatisfied with her only existence, there was an «informal leader», a girl named Donna. She has been very nasty since their first meeting in the dorm, and she had always been the source of never-ending complaints about our heroine.
The woman wrote, «Donna has a boyfriend, who doesn’t attend our college, and, despite the strict rules for visitors, they breach all of them, and he comes to her room regularly. I knew about that, and I was never complaining about this, because I didn’t want to be like these people. But Donna was purposefully provoking me for some reactions.»
«She was spreading the rumors that I was a light-minded person and that I was trying to seduce her boyfriend, which wasn’t true at all, I just didn’t care about him and I even didn’t pay attention on what he actually looked like. If someone asked me to point at him in a crowd, I’d never do that, because I wouldn’t even recognize him. All these rumors were just rumors, and Donna was trying to make a stir, obviously, and to grab some of other people’s attention.»
Donna paid an immense attention even to our heroine’s outfits.
The woman wrote, «One day, I left my room and went down the hall to the water fountain. I refilled my water bottle, and returned back to my room. At that moment, I was wearing a red tank top and no bra. My top was fitted, but it wasn’t see through. There was a group of people hanging out in the hall, but I didn’t pay a lot of attention. An hour later, I got a violent knock on the door and there was Donna, and she was shouting at me from the beginning.»
The woman goes on, saying, «Donna was totally furious, and she shouted that if I go out into the hall again I must put a bra on. She said that her boyfriend was out there, and he was staring at me.»
The woman admitted that she has always been super non-confrontational, but this time she was fuming. She didn’t show her emotions at that moment, but she already knew what to do next.
The woman’s petty revenge came instantly.
The fed up woman wanted to compromise at first. She wrote, «I saw no problem in wearing a bra, but then I just thought that this unfair attitude would go on and on, until I react to it somehow. Next time they would complain about anything else, not less absurd than this time. I wasn’t just ready for this, I wanted to live a normal life from then on. So, I did what Donna wanted me to do, but in my own way.»
The woman revealed, «As soon as Donna asked me to wear a bra, I did this next time I left my room. But I was wearing jeans and my sports bra, and nothing else. So, technically, I did what she wanted me to do, I wore a bra.»
«Her eyes were very wide when she saw me going to the bathroom like this. But she didn’t say anything anymore. She was obviously shocked and couldn’t provide any arguments against my actions. The floor was all-female, no men were ever allowed there, and if she was the person who breached the rules, she was the one who would handle the consequences then.»
And here’re the stories of 15 people, whose revenge to their offenders was so smart, that it deserved to be called an art.
Preview photo credit bruce mars / Unsplash
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