Marlee Matlin is indeed deaf. In addition, she is a mother, a writer, an actress, and an activist who also happens to be Jewish. She didn’t let her disability define her, and she didn’t give up; instead, she keeps inspiring people and supports the less fortunate through a variety of charitable endeavors.
At a nearby children’s theater, she played Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz when she was only seven years old. Due to a malformed cochlea, she had lost her hearing at the age of 18 months. Despite this, she completed high school and pursued a degree in criminal justice in college. She continued to perform throughout, primarily on stage, and released her debut motion picture, Children of a Lesser God, in 1986. Even though it was her first leading role, she won the Academy Award for it, becoming the youngest actress to do so and one of only four women to do so for their first film. She’s also the only deaf actress to ever have won the Oscar, although that is just a sidebar for a woman who believes that “the handicap of deafness is not in the ear; it is in the mind”.
She received four Emmy nominations, two additional nominations, and a Golden Globe Award for Children of a Lesser God that year. She has made appearances over the years in a variety of films and television programs, including Sesame Street, CSI: NY, Desperate Housewives, ER, Seinfeld, and The West Wing.
Marlee Matlin has recently appeared on Dancing with the Stars and Celebrity Apprentice, where she raised a record amount of money for her charity of choice even though she didn’t win the competition. Deaf Child’s Crossing and Nobody’s Perfect are two of her writing credits. She recently released her autobiography, I’ll Scream Later, with the title as a nod to the fact that, at the time she learned she had been nominated for an Academy Award, she was in rehab for drug abuse and didn’t want anyone to know. She intended to celebrate, to “scream later,” once she was clean.
Matlin does a lot of volunteer work with groups that support the deaf all over the world because she doesn’t want to identify as a deaf woman. She participated in the National Anthem at the Super Bowl’s opening in 2007 and received her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2009.
Along with all the other wonderful things Matlin has chosen to do with her life, not many people can say they are the godmother of a cruise ship, but Matlin can. She is a working mother with a family, but she has never let her disability stand in the way of her goals.
