Occupation: Nurse

Relationships: Kenny DeWitt, Ethan Blackthorne

Appearances: Seasons 1 & 2

Who’d Play Her: Olivia Wilde

Love at the Breaking Point: Winter Austen was a struggling nurse with a troubled past when James Blackthorne drew her into his family’s complicated affairs. A former lover of James’s best friend, Kenny DeWitt, Winter was hired by James to seduce his nephew Ethan and distract him from Brooke. What began as a calculated arrangement soon became real for Winter, who fell deeply in love with Ethan and believed she had finally found the stability her life had always lacked.

Winter’s relationship with Ethan was threatened from the beginning by his unresolved feelings for Brooke. After Brooke and Ethan made love in the Dominican Republic, Ethan was caught in an explosion and presumed dead. When he unexpectedly returned, he discovered that Brooke had reconciled with James and was pregnant. Devastated, Ethan reluctantly returned to Winter, but she sensed that his heart still belonged to Brooke.

Her fears were confirmed when Winter broke into Brooke’s apartment and found a discarded letter identifying Ethan as the father of Brooke’s unborn child. Consumed by jealousy and insecurity, Winter increasingly blamed Brooke for every problem in her relationship. During a confrontation at the Blackthorne mansion, Brooke fell down the stairs and was left unconscious. Afraid everyone would assume she had pushed her, Winter fled without helping her. Ethan ended their relationship after learning that she had abandoned the injured and pregnant Brooke.

Desperate to punish them both, Winter revealed Brooke’s secret to James, telling him that Ethan—not James—was the father of her baby. The revelation tore the family apart but did nothing to restore Winter’s relationship with Ethan. Realizing she had destroyed any chance of winning him back, Winter accepted money from Kenny and quietly left Los Angeles.

Winter later resurfaced after Brooke’s infant son, Michael, disappeared from the Blackthorne mansion. Still convinced that Michael belonged with Ethan, Winter became a suspect in the kidnapping. James and Ethan pursued her to a pier, where she stood clutching what she believed was the missing baby. Ignoring their pleas, a distraught Winter plunged thirty feet into the ocean with the bundle in her arms. Ethan dove in after her, only for everyone to discover that Winter had been carrying towels and had mistaken them for Michael. The incident revealed the full extent of her psychological collapse.