At this point, any movie starring Debra Winger is worth our attention. Since taking a break from Hollywood for six years at the height of her fame in the mid-90s, the three-time Oscar nominee has maintained a mystique as the One Who Walked Away. Which overlooks the fact that since returning to acting in 2001, she has worked steadily, on projects such as Jonathan Demmes Rachel Getting Married and the recent Netflix sitcom The Ranch.
But we like that mystique, Winger says in a recent interview in Los Angeles, breaking into her unmistakable, irrepressible full-throated laugh. Dont list any of my credits. Lets stick with the mystique. Its self-perpetuating sometimes; it doesnt matter what I do.
What she has done now includes The Lovers, in which Winger stars as Mary, a woman having an affair behind the back of her husband, Michael (Tracy Letts). He is too distracted to notice or care because he is carrying on an affair of his own. (Aidan Gillen and Melora Walters play their respective paramours.) An impending visit from their college-age son (Tyler Ross) and his new girlfriend (Jessica Sula) becomes a catalyst for both Mary and Michael to truly shake things up.
With its powerfully understated and finely detailed performances from Winger and Letts, the picture is a welcome return for writer and director Azazel Jacobs, whose previous film was 2011s Terri starring John C. Reilly and Jacob Wysocki. (In the interim, Jacobs worked on the television series Doll & Em.)
The chemistry between Winger and Letts, the flinty sparks that fly between them, gives The Lovers much of its energy.
I did not know that was going to happen until the first day of shooting. That was a total welcome surprise, Jacobs says in a separate interview. They just from the beginning found this groove with each other and challenged and inspired and just brought everything to a much higher level. Its what youre always hoping for, but its hard to aim for, hard to expect.
Jacobs recalls that he first met Winger when she came to a screening of Terri. She subsequently sent him a letter of appreciation that he came to cherish. (Winger says she took up letter writing after someone gave her a box of personalized stationary, recounting other notes of thanks and praise to Olivier Assayas, Juliette Binoche and Mike Leigh.)
Jacobs and Winger kept in touch, and he tried out a few ideas on her, but it wasnt until the exploration of marriage in The Lovers that she grew interested enough to participate.
Winger, with bare feet, slim black jeans and a black button-down shirt, sits alongside Letts, the award-winning playwright and actor, who on this day in a West Hollywood hotel suite wears brown boots, gray jeans and a grey fitted T-shirt. Theres an easy back-and-forth between the two, with a cheerful lightness replacing their on-screen marital tension.
While both of their characters in the film carry on affairs outside their marriage, neither Winger nor Letts ever judged them for it, feeling it more important to understand why they behaved the way they did.
Its a really interesting thing to consider what are the things you are willing to judge other people for. And that line changes as I get older, Letts says. Im getting to be a combination of less judgmental and more thin-skinned.
The movies elegantly roving visual style began in part when a Steadicam wouldnt work and cinematographer Tobias Datum suggested a very long dolly shot instead. While Jacobs was initially skeptical, once he saw how well it went, he continued down that path, particularly after he noticed how well Datum and Winger collaborated.
Debra, she knows camera like Ive never experienced in an actress, Jacobs says. Ive never witnessed anybody fall in sync with a cameraperson like that. Hes always predicting where the actors are going, but she could just as easily tell where he wanted to go.
Since Wingers breakout role in Urban Cowboy and on through films such as An Officer and a Gentleman, Terms of Endearment, The Sheltering Sky and Shadowlands, she has been bringing to the screen performances once described by the late L.A. Times critic Charles Champlin as vibrantly sensual.
At the same time, she garnered a reputation as a difficult collaborator, leading Shirley MacLaine to notoriously refer to Wingers turbulent brilliance in an Oscar acceptance speech. Winger also didnt mind saying publicly when she didnt like how a picture had turned out, which broke with many of the unspoken protocols of Hollywood decorum.
So, has she changed at all in how she approaches her work?
Nope. So you go figure, Winger says with a hint of mischief. I am changed the way people grow and change, but Im not mellow. Looking toward Letts, she adds, Ask him. I am not mellow.
Letts jumps in, adding, In terms of this film, Debra wasnt hard to work with for me at all. I think its not talking out of school to say she liked me, she liked the director, she liked the [director of photography], she liked the script.
Debra isnt somebody who suffers fools, and lets also identify this out loud, shes a woman. And if a woman expresses an opinion, and if she expresses it however she expresses it, grumpy or demanding or whatever spin you want to put on it, theres a whole different value placed on that because shes a woman.
I cant disagree with this very intelligent man, Winger says with a smile. And I didnt ask him to say that.
As Winger has been making her way back into the spotlight over the last few years, it has coincided with a moment when the attention to women in Hollywood, both behind and in front of the camera, has amplified and picked up momentum.
I so ignore it, Winger says. Were not pushing the needle by talking about it. Something must be done. Measures must be taken. I dont want to talk about it. Its the first argument I had with Gloria Steinem, and we continue to have that argument every week when we go out to dinner. I get going out when you have a specific goal or a cause or something you need to accomplish, but opening up a conversation about women in film,' I swear to God, I dont get it.
She pauses, then adds, Im going to get in trouble for that.
The sense that Hollywood pushed Winger away, had no place for someone like her, is what led Rosanna Arquette to title a 2002 documentary on women and Hollywood Searching for Debra Winger. (Winger herself has never watched it.) Winger grows suddenly tongue-tied when asked to address the idea that she is an oracle for a younger generation of women.
You do it by example, not by what you say, interjects Letts. Youve done it by example. Youre not going to say anything to summarize the experience of women in Hollywood.
True, Winger says, but I wish that the strength could come from somewhere other than the source of pain. Thats the clue Ive found, and young actresses, I can pick them out, I can see them, and there is a fearlessness and something scary about them at the same time. Because they come with a fierceness that says, I am not going to look for my power from the source that wants to take it away. Thats not who I am going to get involved in the struggle with. My sense of power is going to come from my life. And from, in a way, ignoring that fact that you think I shouldnt be here.
She nevertheless seems well aware of the totemic fascination she holds for people as someone who made her own decisions regarding what is now referred to as work-life balance. But she is also very conscious of the kinds of movies she both wants to be in and wants to see, movies rooted in relationships and genuine human experiences.
For Winger, The Lovers is not a small film.
I think its right-sized, she says. I think this film is right-sized.
REVIEW: In 'The Lovers,' Debra Winger and Tracy Letts give us an achingly poignant portrait of a modern marriage
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Debra Winger and Tracy Letts on their chemistry in 'The Lovers' and, reluctantly, on Hollywood and women - Los Angeles Times
