At 18 months old, Marlee Matlin lost all hearing in her right ear and 80% in her left ear, the byproduct of fever and illness. At 21 years old, Marlee won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her role in Children of a Lesser God, the youngest ever to win in that category, and the only deaf Academy Award winner in any category. She’s published several books and is a strong advocate of the rights of deaf people, the disabled, and children with AIDS. As an actress, Marlee is outstanding, a multiple award nominee and winner in both television and film.
Here are just a few of the excellent roles Marlee has taken over the years.
Children of a Lesser God
The movie that introduced Matlin to the world, is a debut film performance that ranks as one of Hollywood's best. Matlin plays Sarah Norman, a janitor at a school for the deaf who is wooed by the new teacher at the school, James Leeds (William Hurt). Their relationship grows but ultimately begins to fall apart, as the two struggle with how to bridge their worlds when Sarah is distrustful of the hearing and James is unable to understand the life of a deaf person.
Reasonable Doubts
Matlin was co-headliner on the police drama, playing Tess Kaufman, assistant D.A., alongside Detective Dicky Cobb (Mark Harmon). The show was about the working relationship of the two, with Kaufman's sympathy for the suspects at odds with Cobb's harsher perception of them. Particularly refreshing is that the relationship is defined more by these differing ideals than by Kaufman's deafness (and, of course, the will they/won't they dynamic).
The West Wing
Matlin played the role of Josephine "Joey" Lucas, a pollster working for the Bartlet Administration, in seventeen episodes across all seven seasons of The West Wing. She would be recognized for her work on the show, a nominee of the 2000 Online Film Critics Association Awards as Best Guest Actress in a Drama Series.
The L Word
Seasons four, five, and six of The L Word introduced Matlin's Jodi Lerner, a fiercely independent, well-known sculptor, who would begin a relationship with Bette (Jennifer Beals). Lerner is a prominent role, on equal footing with the rest of the cast, adding another layer of diversity to the LGBTQ-centric show with her introduction as a successful deaf character. The role also gave Matlin the freedom to communicate by sign language and speech, giving the character a confidence that Matlin herself struggled with as a child.
Sweet Nothing in My Ear
A made-for-television film, based on a play by Stephen Sachs of the same name. Dan (Jeff Daniels) and Laura Miller (Matlin) are a separated couple in a custody dispute over Adam (Noah Valencia), their young, deaf son. Dan wants cochlear implants for Adam, a pursuit that Laura, deaf since youth, is strongly against. The film itself is quite good, but it's the issues and questions raised by the film that are the most intriguing. Would you change your lot in life if you could? Are the risks worth the reward? What are the advantages of a cochlear implant, and by the same token, what are the disadvantages?
Seinfeld - "The Lip Reader"
It's no secret that Matlin has a great sense of humor about her deafness, and nowhere is this more evident than in her Emmy-nominated guest role on the Seinfeld classic episode "The Lip Reader". Jerry (Jerry Seinfeld) begins dating Laura (Matlin), a deaf lineswoman at the US Open. Meanwhile, George (Jason Alexander) has been dumped by his girlfriend, Gwen (Linda Kash), which he believes is due to his incredibly messy devouring of an ice cream sundae, caught on the US Open broadcast. Learning that Laura can read lips (in a hilarious exchange where Jerry and George converse while covering their own lips with menus and napkins), George asks her to read Gwen's lips at a party and see if he's right about his reasoning. An unfortunate slip between "sleep together" and "sweep together" leads to the inevitable foot-in-mouth confrontation between George and Gwen. Matlin is clearly enjoying herself here, proving her talents extend beyond dramatic roles.
Sesame Street / Baby Einstein / Blue’s Clues
Matlin takes her role as an advocate of the deaf community very seriously, using the opportunities her status has given her to bridge the hearing and deaf communities. This has also included notable appearances on children's programming, teaching sign language, and encouraging children to be welcoming of the deaf. On two episodes of Blue's Clues, Matlin appeared as Marlee, a librarian who loves books and teaching sign language. Appearing as herself, Matlin was the ASL instructor on three Baby Einstein videos: "Baby Wordsworth", "Baby's Favorite Places", and "My First Signs". This allowed her to teach the very young the basics of ASL. To those of a certain age, though, her most notable guest spot was as a "grouch groupie" on a 1988 episode of Sesame Street, signing the words to "Just The Way You Are" as Billy Joel sang to Oscar (Caroll Spinney). Yep - the Piano Man and Marlee Matlin together. It doesn't get better than that.
Picket Fences
Another Emmy-nominated guest-starring role for Matlin, this time as Laurie Bey, beginning with the Picket Fences episode "The Dancing Bandit". A quirky introduction on an eccentric show, Bey was a Robin Hood type bank robber who, at the end of every heist, would dance before leaving the premises and hand the money out to those that had been wronged by the system.
Against Her Will: The Carrie Buck Story
Based on a true story, Against Her Will: The Carrie Buck Story tells the tale of Carrie Buck (Matlin). Carrie, an intellectually-disabled young woman, loses custody of the child she had out of wedlock and is then the subject of a 1927 Supreme Court decision that allowed for the involuntary sterilization of the mentally deficient. Buck would be a feather in the cap for Matlin, her first role where she was not playing a deaf person.
CODA
The critically-acclaimed 2021 film CODA (Child of Deaf Adults) is the story of Ruby (Emilia Jones), the only hearing child in the Rossi family: Frank (Troy Kotsur), her father; Jackie (Matlin), her mother; and her brother Leo (Daniel Durant). The family runs a fishing business, which Ruby assists with, planning to join full-time upon graduation. However, when she joins the school choir, Ruby is encouraged by her teacher, Mr. V (Eugenio Derbez), to audition for the Berklee College of Music. Torn between her family and her dreams, Ruby has to decide what's best for her future.
CODA is a nominee for Best Adapted Screenplay at the upcoming 2022 Academy Awards, but the real story here is how CODA has become a testament to the tireless work that Matlin has done for the deaf community since her Oscar win. Her insistence on deaf actors playing deaf roles paid off with the Oscar-nominated performance of Troy Kotsur in the Best Supporting Actor category and her passion for delivering projects that show the hearing and deaf communities coming together has been rewarded with CODA's Best Picture of the Year nomination at this year's Academy Awards.