Deaf actress and activist Marlee Matlin was born 58 years ago in Morton Grove, Illinois. When asked to do a PBS Masters biography of her life, she requested a deaf director. Shoshanna Stern became the guiding force behind this autobiographical recounting of Matlin’s life and career.
She lost her hearing at 18 months of age for reasons never completely determined. As she shares, her parents never got over the guilt. She describes a childhood feeling of being cut off, dismissed, and ignored, saying, “That’s just how it was as the deaf girl.”
Although she had always loved to perform, she was often not allowed to audition because of her handicap.
MARLEE & WILLIAM HURT
However, when the play “Children of a Lesser God” was being made into a movie, the search for a deaf actress to play the lead led to casting the then 19-year-old Matlin in the part, opposite William Hurt, who was then 35. Sparks flew. The two became a couple for a brief period, which led to charges of abuse on Matlin’s part and denials on Hurt’s. She has said, “Bill Hurt was threatened by my youth and the sudden change in my success from just one movie.” Her autobiographical recounting of their romance in “I’ll Scream Later,” written in 2009, also described sexual molestation at ages 11 and 15.
Matlin’s impassioned performance in “Children of a Lesser God” won her the Oscar as Best Actress of the Year in 1987, but also contributed to the break-up of her romance with the much older Hurt.   One thing that Marlee has acknowledged that was positive from her time with Hurt was that he convinced her to get clean from a dependence on drugs and alcohol and to go to rehab, as he had done. She checked into the Betty Ford Center.  She remains married to her husband Kevin Grandalski after four children and 32 years, which may be as major an accomplishment as being the youngest woman (and only deaf actress) to win the Academy Award for Best Actress.
MARLEE & HENRY WINKLER
When Marlee was twelve years old, a chance meeting with Henry Winkler in Chicago, then riding high as the Fonz on “Happy Days”, led to a lifetime friendship with the actor and his wife. In fact, Marlee lived with the Winklers for two years and was married to her current husband, a Burbank police officer, in the Winklers’ backyard in 1993.
ACTIVISM
Marlee Matlin has leaned into activism on behalf of the deaf, although she claims, in the documentary, to have been uninformed about deaf issues when she achieved prominence for her Oscar win in 1987. As she said, “I was thrust into it, but nobody explained it to me.” One of her projects, (undertaken with the help of Iowa Senator Tom Harkin, who had a deaf brother) was to make all television sets captioning capable, to aid with language deprivation that the deaf encounter.
Matlin’s involvement with the 2022 film “Coda” is included, which won three Oscars for Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Actor for Troy Kotsure, who said, “What kept me inspired was Marlee Matlin.”
Matlin’s words at that time were “Let’s move forward. Let there be other firsts.”
Matlin is shown in her car with Billy Joel’s song “My Life” playing, mouthing the words, “I never said I was the victim of circumstances.”
CONCLUSION
The Sundance documentary’s look at Matlin’s career was interesting. I know from my 20 years of teaching next door to the hearing-impaired room at the junior high school level (as well as from having deaf students in my classrooms) that a deaf student who is doing well in school is often a truly brilliant individual. The hurdles for deaf students who are often “left alone to solve it on their own” are huge.  She admits in the documentary that, “I have no idea how I survived.”
Matlin has a production company and has several projects in the works, including a desire to work again with Director Shoshanna Stern.