Payne and Film Streams luring actress back to Nebraska

She filmed a movie in Lincoln in 1981 and had a widely publicized fling with the governor.

Now actress Debra Winger will return to the state for a fundraiser.

Oscar-winning screenwriter and director Alexander Payne will interview Winger at the Holland Performing Arts Center on Sept. 13 in a benefit for Film Streams, Omaha’s nonprofit art-house movie theater at 14th and Webster Streets.

Payne, an Omaha native who serves on the Film Streams advisory board, interviewed actress Laura Dern last summer before a crowd of about 1,000. The event, which included cocktails, dinner and a post-interview reception, raised more than $185,000.

Payne will again do an interview in the style of the Bravo cable channel’s “Inside the Actors Studio.” Winger will be asked to reflect on her career, react to film clips from her movies and talk about the experience of filmmaking.

While there will be no dinner this year, Payne and Winger will appear at a cocktail reception.

Prices have not yet been set, and tickets won’t go on sale until July, said Casey Logan, marketing director for Film Streams. Ticket prices last year ranged from $35 to $250, depending on which parts of the evening were included.

Though Winger has never appeared in one of Payne’s movies, he said he has long admired “both her fabulous work and her mystique.”

He said her personal and professional connections to Nebraska made her a good choice for the fundraiser.

Winger has appeared in more than 20 films, earning best-actress Oscar nominations for “An Officer and a Gentleman” in 1982, “Terms of Endearment” in 1983 and “Shadowlands” in 1993.

“Terms of Endearment” was partly filmed in Kearney, Neb., and Lincoln. During filming, Winger met then-Gov. Bob Kerrey. The two began a romance that lasted a few years, and Winger sometimes spent weeks at a time living in the Governor’s Mansion.

“I’m absolutely delighted she has agreed to come back to Nebraska for an appreciation of her work and the chance to get to know her a little,” Payne said by e-mail last week.

He said Winger, who rarely does public interviews, was enticed to come here partly because a planned retrospective of her movies at Film Streams’ Ruth Sokolof Theater would be projected on film, not digitally.

“As a film purist, she knows that’s really the only way to see them,” Payne said.

Winger’s break came with the 1980 movie “Urban Cowboy,” in which she rode a mechanical bull while romancing a young John Travolta.

She married actor Timothy Hutton in 1986, bore a son and divorced in 1990.

In 1995, at age 40, she walked away from moviemaking. She met actor Arliss Howard in 1993, married him in 1998 and had another son. They live on a farm in upstate New York.

Winger returned to making movies in 2001. Last year she earned rave reviews and Oscar talk for her appearance in “Rachel Getting Married.” She played the mother of a recovering addict.

For information on early reservations for Payne’s interview of Winger, visit the Web at www.filmstreams.org.

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