Debra Winger: Dangerous Woman

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In the jungle called Hollywood, there are two tribes. One is the brown-eyed honey drippers, the other the blue-eyed truth tellers. The honey drippers address their valet parkers as darling, glad-hand everyone who brunches at Patrick's, and make movies they hope the whole world will pay to see. The truth tellers take risks and make trouble. They sign up for roles in eccentric movies and turn down parts in surefire hits. They go their own way, never fretting if others don't follow.

In Hollywood the honey drippers are legion. As for the blue-eyed truth tellers -- those strange, spiky creatures who might be avoided and ought to be cherished -- they could all be called Debra Winger.

Truth teller is perhaps the kindest name that the industry would think to call the actress, whose strong will has often butted against Hollywood's tender backside. She was outspoken in her early plush years, when potent turns in Urban Cowboy, An Officer and a Gentleman and Terms of Endearment made her the movies' most promising -- and delivering -- young actress. She wore her wild streak in public: sex, drugs, locking horns with directors and co-stars. She turned down meaty roles in several popular films (including Broadcast News) and walked off another (A League of Their Own). Her star waned with brash parts in The Sheltering Sky and Everybody Wins. She made amber waves in Nebraska while trysting with Governor Bob Kerrey, before and after her two- year marriage to actor Timothy Hutton.

Winger is unlikely to change, now that she is a full-time mother with a revived career -- earning critical kudos for her role as poet Joy Gresham in Shadowlands and a Golden Globe nomination for the aptly named A Dangerous Woman. "I really don't care," Winger sighs, in her champagne-and-cigarettes voice, when the subject of her reputation is broached. "I'd rather have the freedom to say what I want. Sometimes I wish I were more graceful, but, hey, I'm not -- though I'm working on it. And frankly, I'm more interested in people who are deemed difficult. Usually difficulty is just another word for friction, and friction creates heat. I think friction is a good thing."

Fortunately, Richard Attenborough came to the same conclusion. In casting Shadowlands, the director was looking for "an actress who in her own personality had some of the feisty, slightly abrasive elements of Joy Gresham. I knew of Debra's 'difficult' reputation -- of being quite a girl, as we say at home. So I said, 'I don't mind if you slap me around the head -- if at the end of the day what appears on the screen is what we all want.' And of course what happened was that she absolutely came up with the goods."

She had never lost them. At 38, Winger is no longer Hollywood's prime smart cutie. But this dangerous woman is still a beautiful one, with the searchlight intelligence radiating from her blue eyes and the seeming spontaneity, even surprise, at the corners of her famous smile. And her pretty gifts have matured. She mixes the old guts and softness more daringly now, and the lock she has on her characters is stronger than The Club.