It’s been nearly 40 years since a 19-year-old deaf actress, Marlee Matlin, was cast in the lead role in the film adaptation of Mark Medoff’s play Children of a Lesser God. In less than two years, the then-unknown Matlin would become internationally famous, win an Oscar, fall in love with an abusive co-star, and become an influential spokesperson for crucial issues facing the deaf community before falling out with many she had previously inspired.
It was a trailblazing, and often painfully lonely, whirlwind for Matlin, who is the subject of a PBS documentary debuting tonight, Marlee Matlin: Not Alone Anymore, after a brief theatrical release in June. The film focuses heavily on the fights, unexpected and otherwise, Matlin faced in her suddenly transformed life as a young adult with a loving but basically clueless family and little access to resources for the deaf to navigate an indifferent hearing world.
Matlin told me, in a Zoom interview with director Shoshanna Stern and their translators, that she had hoped her sometimes rocky and lonely path would help others navigating their own challenges.
“Because (of) the documentary, you realize you didn’t know who I was and what journey I took. Right?” said Matlin through her long-time translator and production partner, Jack Jason. “All that being said, ‘Hello, you know, this is what I went through. This is my story.’ And I’m not the only one who’s experienced these kind of stories, who went through the things that I documented. But if there’s something in the documentary that one person can identify with, I can say that that was the success of the documentary. I did my job, so to speak.”
Stern, who also is deaf, is seen frequently in the documentary in conversation with Matlin. Others who appear include long-time friend Henry Winkler, who met Matlin when she was a star-struck 12-year-old inviting him to her performance; Children of a Lesser God director Randa Haines, writer/director Aaron Sorkin, who cast Matlin in a major role in The West Wing, and deaf actors Lauren Ridloff and John Maucere.
Not least are appearances, later in the documentary by writer/director Sian Heder and actor Troy Kotsur, who both won Oscars for CODA, the 2023 Best Picture winner that Matlin anchored. Kotsur, a deaf actor who’d long struggled to find roles (or role models beyond Matlin) credited Matlin’s insistence on a deaf actor to play her husband in the film, became the second deaf actor to win an Oscar, 35 years after Matlin’s landmark.
Matlin’s path was indeed a lonely one for decades, which Stern said the documentary was focused on illustrating.
“It’s a story of a society and the society’s expectations and the types of responsibilities that society usually puts on women, that society puts on people who are the first,” Stern said. “We do have this big obsession and fascination with being the first. I think that’s one theme that I really wanted to explore in the film, the loneliness of that, the weight of that, the challenges of that. Really, we struck gold, and we are so lucky that it was Marlee at the age of 19, she was able to figure out how to advocate and how to navigate our political system and our media system, and she made (closed-caption requirements on all televisions) possible. And not everyone would have been able to do that.”
Now, a bit short of 60 years old, Matlin has some perspective on the tempests of her youth, and the struggles to find jobs since, even with an Oscar in her back pocket.
“Everyone has their own journey, and everyone has their own story and their own experiences in life, whatever it may be, wherever they may be, whoever they may be, whoever they’re with,” Matlin said. “And this documentary just happens to document mine, and I just thought I’d take the opportunity to indulge the audience in letting them see or have a better understanding of where I came from and who I was and am.”
Both Matlin and Stern believe there are still too few opportunities for deaf actors, especially during what has been a dramatic reduction in film and TV production by media companies in the Los Angeles region. The Wall Street Journal in a recent recounting of the fall in production called the state of the business “a disaster movie,” a facile but generally accurate metaphor.
The pair said they’ve been cheered that Kotsur has found new roles after the 2023 Oscar win, even amid the industry’s depression.
But otherwise, it’s been a difficult time as Hollywood retreats to what it knows best. Yes, Matlin said, she finally has more deaf colleagues finding roles in Marvel movies, stage plays and much else. But being female, never mind being deaf, makes for a challenging time, even if it’s no longer so lonely at the top.
“I live in Los Angeles, and I still see billboards, and we’ve kind of gone back to movie stars who are mostly men, and they don’t have to be 20, and they will sell still, they’re still proving to sell,” Matlin said. “And so it’s not just people who are on billboards, but also people who are writing those films, directing those films. I think it’s just for a while, maybe we did have some progress, but as of right now, I’m afraid that we’re just backsliding because of the limited amount of projects that are being made.”