Photo: Paul Morigi/Getty Images

debra winger

Debra Wingeris recounting an early-career moment when she was offered diet pills on set to make her look thinner on camera.

In a recent interview withThe Telegraph, the actress, 66, recalled making the 1982 filmAn Officer and a Gentleman, for which she earned one of her three Oscar nominations for Best Actress. At one point on set, Winger remembers someone telling her to take water retention pills because she looked “puffy in the dailies,” which is raw footage from daily production shoots.

“I was so young I didn’t even know what it was, and I just handed it back and said ‘I’m not taking that.’ It just sounded ridiculous to me,” Winger said. “But somebody else could have really succumbed.”

Winger famously clashed with costars likeRichard Gerewhile makingAn Officer and a Gentleman, once calling him a “brick wall.” She addressed that infamous comment while speaking withTheTelegraph: “I probably could have come up with something nicer. [When] I run into him he says, ‘Are you still saying those things about me?’ "

Snap/Shutterstock

debra winger

Want to get the biggest stories fromPEOPLEevery weekday?Subscribe to our new podcast,PEOPLE Every Day,to get the essential celebrity, entertainment and human interest news stories Monday through Friday.

“I don’t know what Hollywood is. I’m living under the freaking sign now, and I just stare at it and laugh,” Winger said at the time. “Los Angeles is a place, but the idea of Hollywood doesn’t really exist for me. Broadway is more of a family than Hollywood, although there must be some in-crowds that I just don’t know about.”

She insisted that her decision to leave the business had less to do with her professional life and more to do with her personal one.

“The parts that were coming, I wasn’t interested in. I’d already done that or I’d already felt that. I needed to be challenged. My life challenged me more than the parts, so I dove into it fully,” Winger said.

source: people.com