This critically acclaimed TV and stage performer's occasional films have been offbeat and of mixed quality. A fresh-faced, sandy-haired actress, Winningham made her TV debut at 16 singing on the infamous "The Gong Show", but copped a bigger break when her senior class performance as Maria in "The Sound of Music" impressed Hollywood agent Meyer Mishkin. The TV Western series "The Young Pioneers" (1978) lasted only three episodes, but Winningham made a favorable impression in the TV-movie "Special Olympics/A Special Kind of Love" (CBS, 1978), and two years later won an Emmy for her delicately nuanced work as the free-spirited daughter of a farmer caught between her father and a city man in the stirring "Amber Waves" (ABC, 1980). An intense performer adept at conveying a tough rusticity and the sensitivity beneath, Winningham followed with a stunning performance in "Off the Minnesota Strip" (ABC, 1980) as a NY teen prostitute who returns to her small-town family.

Winningham made her feature debut in "One-Trick Pony" (1980) and was especially effective in "Threshold" (1981), as the first recipient of an artificial heart. Later feature roles, though, were either routine supporting parts ("Nobody's Fool" 1986, "Hard Promises" 1992), in films completely unworthy of her ("Turner and Hooch" 1989) or a combination of both ("St. Elmo's Fire" 1985). Winningham shone in the role of Mattie, the common-law wife of "Wyatt Earp" (1984) opposite Kevin Costner, and she had one of her best roles as a successful folk-rock singer coping with her sister's jealousy and addictions in "Georgia" (1995). The latter reunited her with the screenwriter Barbara Turner, who had penned two of Winningham's more successful TV-movies, "Freedom" (ABC, 1981) and "Eye on the Sparrow" (NBC, 1987).

Winningham has fared considerably better in her mainstay, the TV-movie, the restless aspects of her acting persona well-suited to the passionate Justine in "The Thorn Birds" (ABC, 1983), a recreation of the blind and deaf heroine of "Helen Keller--The Miracle Continues" (syndicated, 1984), the daughter of deaf parents longing to make a life on her own in the justly acclaimed "Love Is Never Silent" (NBC, 1985) and the undercover investigator torn in her loyalties in "Love and Lies" (ABC, 1990).