The family moved to California when Debra was five.
She fell in love with acting in high school but kept it a secret from her family.
Madonna was no fan of Winger either, since she told Carrie Fisher that one of her nicknames was Kit Moresby, a character from a novel she loved, until she saw the film adaptation of that novel where Winger played Kit in The Sheltering Sky 1990.
At 16, she ran off to a kibbutz and did her basic training in the Israeli Army.