Marlee Matlin (born August 24, 1965, Morton Grove, Illinois, U.S.) is an American actress and activist who was the first deaf performer to win an Academy Award, for best actress for her debut film performance, in Children of a Lesser God (1986). She is also known for seeking greater representation of the hearing impaired and others with disabilities in movies and television.
Matlin lost almost all of her hearing when she was 18 months old. She made her stage debut in a 1974 production of The Wizard of Oz staged by the Children’s Theatre of the Deaf and sponsored by the Center on Deafness, then in Des Plaines, Illinois, and she continued to act with that theatre for the next several years. Following her graduation from high school, Matlin began studying criminal justice at a community college with an eye toward becoming a police officer, but, upon learning that her deafness would severely limit her options in law enforcement, she left school.
In 1985 Matlin was cast in a supporting role in a revival by Chicago’s Immediate Theatre of the play Children of a Lesser God, which had won a Tony Award in 1980. Her performance won notice, and when Randa Haines, the director of the film adaptation, saw a video of that production, she cast Matlin in the lead role of her movie, opposite William Hurt. Matlin was widely acclaimed for her moving portrayal of a hearing-impaired cleaning woman at a school for the deaf who insists on communicating only in American Sign Language. Matlin earned a Golden Globe Award, and she became the youngest performer to win the Oscar for best actress.
Matlin next played the wife of the title character in the widely panned film Walker (1987), and she portrayed the deaf mother of a hearing daughter who has to fight her own (hearing) mother for the child’s custody in the television movie Bridge to Silence (1989). Matlin later starred with Mark Harmon in the TV series Reasonable Doubts (1991–93), and she was twice nominated (1992 and 1993) for a Golden Globe Award for her role as an assistant district attorney in that series. She played the mentally disabled title character in the TV movie Against Her Will: The Carrie Buck Story (1994), and she appeared in the film melodrama It’s My Party (1996).
Matlin was nominated for an Emmy Award for a 1994 guest appearance on Seinfeld. She had a recurring role (1993–96) as Mayor Laurie Bey in the TV series Picket Fences, and she received (1994) a second Emmy nomination for that role. Matlin was nominated a third time for an Emmy for a 2000 guest role on The Practice, and she received a fourth Emmy nomination for a 2004 guest role on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. In the documentary What the #$*! Do We (K)now!? (2004), she played a fictional photographer. In the early 21st century Matlin had recurring roles on The West Wing, My Name Is Earl, The L Word, Switched at Birth, and Quantico. Her films from this period included the family drama CODA (2021), which features a largely deaf cast; the movie title stands for “Child of Deaf Adults.”