Top 77 Quotes & Sayings by Debra Winger

Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American actor Debra Winger.
Last updated on September 17, 2024.
Debra Winger

Debra Lynn Winger is an American actress. She starred in the films An Officer and a Gentleman (1982), Terms of Endearment (1983), and Shadowlands (1993), each of which earned her a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress. She won the National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Actress for Terms of Endearment, and the Tokyo International Film Festival Award for Best Actress for A Dangerous Woman (1993). Her other film roles include Urban Cowboy (1980), Legal Eagles (1986), Black Widow (1987), Betrayed (1988), The Sheltering Sky (1990), Forget Paris (1995), and Rachel Getting Married (2008). In 2012, she made her Broadway debut in the original production of the David Mamet play The Anarchist. In 2014, she received the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Transilvania International Film Festival.

It's such an amazing thing to be loved for who you are.
People who make lots of money at what they do should just shut up about it.
Show me the story. I just want to tell a story that pulls me forward. — © Debra Winger
Show me the story. I just want to tell a story that pulls me forward.
I was never afraid of failure after that because, I think, coming that close to death you get kissed. With the years, the actual experience of course fades, but the flavor of it doesn't. I just had a real sense of what choice do I have but to live fully?
An actress in a film starts every day with an hour and a half in front of a mirror, with hair and make-up and costumes.
Just because we're on schedule is no reason to shoot bad acting. Someone once said to me, 'You're inconsiderate.' And I said, 'Inconsiderate? Bad acting is the ultimate inconsideration.' It's a collective slap to a million faces at the same time.
I was the all-American face. You name it, honey - American Dairy Milk, Metropolitan Life insurance, McDonald's, Burger King. The Face That Didn't Matter - that's what I called my face.
In the early part of my life I carried the flame for fiery women: perky women who were not dumb.
I am one of the happiest people I know. And that's a weird place to have arrived at from being a depressed Jewish kid.
Ultimately, however, the script an actor enlivens is someone else's words.
When you connect with a cause, it's like falling in love.
You see people on TV flying in to places just to pick up a baby, or brush some flies away. That's great if they can bring that issue to public attention. But that's not what I wanted to do. I was interested in committing to something that I could function in whether I was Debra Winger or not. Because nobody might care about that next week.
Bad acting is the ultimate inconsideration. — © Debra Winger
Bad acting is the ultimate inconsideration.
I want to start a trend of women as we really look. Some good things, some not so good. I am tired of looking at frozen faces.
I do admit to being challenging, but it's always for the work, it's never personal. I will walk out on a scene if it's all lit and ready to go but it's not happening.
I had a very insightful friend who warned me back when I stopped reading scripts, 'It's easier to change directions while you're still moving.' If you stop, it's harder to get started again. I still don't think I made the wrong decision, but he was right.
Most bad behavior comes from insecurity.
I just live in the truth and think that every moment counts.
I became an actor because I couldn't not.
I was the all-American face.
I always loved working as an actress, but I didn't understand why I couldn't just opt out of being famous. And then I realized you can, and I think I did. And eventually, I came to understand that you can do that and also keep working.
I am lucky enough to be married to a guy who tells me I look beautiful every day.
I do not need a lot of money to be happy.
I don't think that I'm that easy to live with. I have to be reminded that I can have fun. I need my family to remind me in a loving and nice way to lighten up.
It's inconceivable to some people that that wouldn't be the sexiest thing to do in the whole world: to be a movie star, and make money, and be pampered, and whatever.
I happen to be interested in watching a face age. I like faces of women aging so it makes me personally quite sad. That's a beautiful gift from God. If people don't want to see that anymore then I won't be in anymore movies.
But I never worried about having a child in my 40s, which is unusual - normally, I'm the queen of worry.
I hope to find the roles that are age appropriate but not yearning to be younger, or parenting ad nauseam.
Never say never, but the thought of electively cutting oneself is beyond my grasp, and I also object to it politically. Denying the lines on our faces makes a comment about age and wisdom I don't care to make.
A good marriage is different to a happy marriage.
I don't think it is worth trying to look 10 years younger through surgery.
I never thought I would start working again, and I did, but it was really hard, and I don't know that I would advise anyone to step back the way I did.
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.
I just want to sleep, and eat, and learn about what's going on in the world.
I don't believe in careers. I believe in work. I'm not interested in some 'big picture that would be really good for me'.
My grandmother gave birth to 13 children and I come from a long line of women who gave birth in their 40s.
It's no secret that I didn't love 'An Officer And A Gentleman' then, and I certainly don't love it now, so at least no one could accuse me of being inconsistent.
If I could have one prayer answered, I would pray for patience. I move so fast sometimes. I try to slow down. — © Debra Winger
If I could have one prayer answered, I would pray for patience. I move so fast sometimes. I try to slow down.
I have enjoyed a wonderful run in films, so far, and I may, at some point, come back. But it will be in my own time and in my own style.
There's a small club of women who are willing to age.
I tend to wear outfits that match the walls.
Granted there are only seven stories in the universe. And I agree with that. But give me a great variation of those stories. And literate.
I never lost my interest in acting but I did lose my interest in the business and what I had to go through to make a film. I felt saturated, you know, like a sponge when it's saturated - it's not good.
I push for what I think can be the best, and if I feel they're not going for the best, it kills me.
I need my family to remind me in a loving and nice way to lighten up.
Most bad behaviour comes from insecurity.
I will walk out on a scene if it's all lit and ready to go but it's not happening.
I used to love going on a junket and promoting a film when it was not a 24-hour news cycle, and when there weren't so many media outlets. You could actually talk about the film.
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.
I think it's a little irresponsible for women who choose surgery to then say they can portray the average woman on the street, because if the average woman can't afford those treatments, then she's going to say, 'I'm 53 and I don't look like that,' and start thinking she's ugly or inadequate.
People pay to see movies with women looking beautiful, but I think there will be a place for me to play women looking my own age. — © Debra Winger
People pay to see movies with women looking beautiful, but I think there will be a place for me to play women looking my own age.
I think when it comes to Botox and surgery, actresses should do it or not do it, but be honest about their choices.
If you want to get a facelift, get a facelift. Don't sit there and talk about why you got it because of the pressure.
I guess what I have to say is, "Don't do it." I don't recommend it, because, having said that, the people that should do it will do it anyway, despite the fact that I've said not to do it. Only the ones who've said, "Oh, she said not to do it," aren't going to do it, and they shouldn't be doing it in the first place.
It's easier to change directions while you're still moving.
I started out in stand-up, so it's very satisfying to make people laugh, but it usually means at your own expense.
Theater is all about the rehearsal process. In fact, I think a lot of times opening night there's a mixed sadness because you're finished with a lot of people's favorite part of the process, which is finding the character and discovering it, and then you get to live it.
I think that we definitely deal with that issue and don't ignore it, the issue of drink, but that's not where it ends. I just think that what the fear is that you think alcoholic writer or whatever and you forget the intelligence that can be present. I mean so many people just write off someone who drinks as one thing.
Denying the lines on our faces makes a comment about age and wisdom I don't care to make.
The minute we have a pain, we want a diagnosis. So I think the minute we feel love, it's very hard to just let it be. We want to identify it, we want to catalog it, we want to keep the thing and create the environment it happened in. That's where marriage comes from! Let's make an institution out of it!
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