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The Guardian
9 hours ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘It's hard to find work': Marlee Matlin on making Hollywood history but waiting for change
In 1987, at the age of 21, Marlee Matlin became the youngest person ever to win a best actress Oscar. Footage of her victory appears early in Marlee Matlin: Not Alone Anymore, a new documentary on the trailblazing actor's life and career: Matlin, remarkably fresh-faced even for 21, in her very 80s purple dress, her brunette hair swept up by a floral headpiece, black-rimmed glasses on, appears stunned as William Hurt, her co-star in Children of a Lesser God and her boyfriend at the time, reads her name. Thunderous applause. The camera captures fellow nominee Jane Fonda mouthing 'that's so great' as Matlin, the first and still only deaf actor to win the award, approaches the podium and kisses Hurt. As she delivers her speech in American Sign Language (ASL), she seems almost too shocked to emote, overcome with the gravity of the moment. Matlin's win was indeed groundbreaking, a watershed moment for deaf representation. But as Not Alone Anymore explains, it was also much more complicated than a feelgood story of societal triumph, or a turning point for deaf creatives. Nor was it one of personal glory. Halfway through the film, the scene is replayed again, this time with the sound taken away – the thunderous applause muted to just a simulation of Matlin's own thunderous heartbeat as she walked to the stage. 'I was afraid as I walked up the stairs to get the Oscar,' Matlin recalls on screen in ASL. 'I was afraid because I knew, in my gut, that he wasn't that happy.' Hurt, 16 years her senior and an established Hollywood star, was intensely jealous of her success, and had already begun physically abusing her. Without sound and with context, what once read as overwhelming shock on her face instead appears as something darker, shaded with fear. The twist, of sorts, is one of many decisions by director Shoshannah Stern to subvert the hearing perspective that most viewers automatically assume. 'I wanted to return to her Oscar-winning moment twice,' Stern, a deaf actor herself, told me through an interpreter, 'because sound does limit people. There are a lot of things that I feel hearing people miss when they are just listening with their ears and not listening with their eyes.' When I first watched Matlin's win, I assumed, as Stern expected, that 'it's this roaring applause, so we're celebrating'. Without sound, the picture is clearer. 'You could see in that moment how scary it is,' said Stern. 'And it's right there. It's been in front of us this whole time.' Stern's intrinsic understanding of the deaf perspective was the reason Matlin, who went on to a long career on such shows as Seinfeld, The West Wing, The L Word and, most recently, the Oscar-winning film Coda, decided to make the film at all. 'Almost none of the documentaries that I've seen that have to do with a subject matter like myself have not been done right,' she told me over Zoom via her interpreter, Jack Jason, who has worked with Matlin since 1985. When PBS's American Masters approached her about a documentary, she had one demand: the director had to be deaf, and it had to be Stern, a longtime friend and occasional collaborator who co-created the show This Close. As she did with early financiers of Coda who wanted to cast big-name hearing actors for two deaf roles, Matlin stuck to her guns. Deaf participation, take it or leave it. 'I wanted to have that type of conversation I could [with] Shoshannah, where I could feel free and sign and not worry about an interpreter voiceover, not worry about my surroundings, not worry about any of that, just be there,' Matlin said. 'That was the first time that I felt at ease.' Much of Marlee Matlin: Not Alone Anymore, which first premiered at the Sundance film festival, features Stern and Matlin in conversation unlike in any prior documentary I've seen, even with deaf subjects. The two women sign without voiceover, just subtitles for hearing viewers. Any ASL interpreters were not only off camera, but in a different room, communicating via earpieces. 'I wasn't accustomed to that approach. I've never seen that,' said Matlin. 'I'm accustomed to being voiced over, because that's how it's been in my entire career. That's the hearing perspective.' As the first Oscar-winning deaf actor and still the most famous, Matlin knows how, as Stern puts it, 'the world often tries to force perspectives on people, put the weight of explaining an entire community's experience on one person'. Voiceover and interpreters 'are another forced perspective', she said. 'When I'm interviewed by hearing people, I have to look at the interpreter. Where are they? How is my language being translated into English? And then I'm limiting myself. I'm thinking in a way that the hearing interviewer or the hearing director is thinking. I'm not thinking as myself.' 'It wasn't what I wanted Marlee to say in our documentary, it was how she spoke, how that changes when our expectations and our perspectives change,' she added. 'Accessibility is for everyone. It's not just for us as deaf people, but a lot of times that responsibility, that weight, is put on one person.' Not Alone Anymore illustrates that weight, which Matlin felt acutely as a very young person experiencing rapid professional success. Cast in Children of a Lesser God fresh out of high school, Matlin was new not only to screen acting but the world beyond her small community in suburban Chicago. The youngest of three children in a hearing family – Matlin became deaf at 18 months, for unknown reasons that, she recalls, nevertheless left her parents guilt-stricken – she attended a mixed deaf/hearing school and began acting at age seven; she was inspired, in part, by Henry Winkler, a lifelong mentor she first met backstage at a school show at age 12. (In 1993, Matlin married Kevin Grandalski, a cop she met on the set of Reasonable Doubts, in the Winklers' back yard. They have four children.) Matlin's family was not fluent in ASL, and it took years for her to understand the loneliness and isolation at home. She coped by smoking marijuana. At 19, she began dating Hurt, who was then 35. Her drug use escalated with the physical and emotional abuse; she has said she smoked 20 joints a day, plus cocaine. In the midst of her awards season run, she entered rehab. She emerged sober, and also the face of a deaf community she did not totally understand. 'I didn't realize that there were more deaf people out there, outside of Chicago, a whole community. It was bigger than what I even realized,' she said. Not Alone Anymore powers through cringey clips of interviewers asking Matlin to explain deafness. How did it feel to be deaf? Had she come to terms with it? Matlin powered through as best she could. She quickly became an activist, successfully pushing legislation in the US requiring closed captioning on TV and streaming sites. But she struggled as the lone representative of deafness for hearing people. The film lingers on backlash from the deaf community when Matlin spoke at the 1988 Oscars, which many felt encouraged the stereotype that deaf intelligence was connected to one's ability to imitate hearing speech. Matlin says the incident, fanned by hearing media attention, drove her away from the deaf community for over a decade. 'I had no guidance in terms of someone to sit down to me and explain about the language that was being used, about the language that I used,' she said. 'I had to find out the hard way.' Matlin faced similar media blowback, though of a different tenor, when she disclosed Hurt's abuse, as well as incidents of molestation by a babysitter and teacher in her childhood, in her 2009 memoir, I'll Scream Later. Not Alone Anymore again assembles very pre-#MeToo clips in which interviewers discounted or dismissed her experience. In one clip, Joy Behar asks about 'spectacular' sex with Hurt. 'Marlee has always been ahead of the curve,' said Stern of Matlin's willingness to speak up years before it became more common to do so. When Hurt died in 2022, at the age of 71, Matlin found her name once again brought up in his wake. 'On social media, I had to look at both sides of the conversations,' she recalled. In posts and comments, some people accused her of lying about the abuse; others were mad at those who accused her of crying wolf. 'They were trying to define me,' she said. 'And I would have none of that. I wanted them to stop, but at the same time, I decided to step away from the conversation' during Coda's press run. Did she wish now that she said anything? 'No, I don't,' she answered, after a beat. 'Because nothing would satisfy these people. And why should I have to? I didn't trust what would happen if I did get involved, because of my past experience of being ignored, of being overlooked, not getting any help. But it was interesting to observe, to see the two factions fighting about me thinking that they knew me.' It's a typically strident answer from Matlin, who has never minced words, particularly on how her Oscar did not open up more opportunities for deaf actors – the film's title comes from her emotional reaction to Coda costar Troy Kotsur's supporting actor Oscar in 2022, becoming only the second deaf actor to win. As with Matlin's 1987 trophy, Kotsur's win hasn't changed much. 'I'm not seeing more opportunities open up,' said Stern. 'It's still up to deaf people or people from a minority group to explain their experience to the majority,' she added. 'We continue to say what is expected of us, which is: 'Great story. Representation has changed! There's going to be so many job opportunities!' That's what people are expecting us to say. And if we say that, nothing's going to change.' 'My least favorite question is: Are you working? What's next?' said Matlin. 'I hate answering that question. I say, 'Oh, well, I have this.' I try to change the subject, talk about something else because they won't understand what I'm going through. 'It's hard to find work,' she said, but still insists: 'This is something I love to do. This is a business that I love being in. I love acting. I love it all.' Naturally, she can't say what is next – 'waiting for a yes or no, an answer, that's typically what I do' – beyond press for a film she and Stern both hope challenges some perspectives. 'I hope it makes people think. I hope that people feel seen,' said Stern. 'I hope people know that they have value in how they see the world, and you don't just have to accept how things have been done for so long.' Marlee Matlin: Not Alone Anymore is out now in US cinemas
Fox News
14-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Fox News
'Happy Days' star Henry Winkler took Marlee Matlin in after difficult relationship with William Hurt
When Marlee Matlin ended her tumultuous relationship with William Hurt, she leaned on her mentor, Henry Winkler, for support. The Oscar winner is detailing her rise to Hollywood stardom in a new documentary, "Marlee Matlin: Not Alone Anymore." According to the film, Matlin turned to the "Happy Days" star after she ended her relationship with actor William Hurt. In the documentary, Matlin claimed that her "Children of a Lesser God" co-star had a "habit of abuse." Hurt died in 2022 at age 71. The 59-year-old, who is deaf, told Fox News Digital through an interpreter that turning to Winkler during a difficult time in her life was a no-brainer. "He didn't make it hard for me to reach out to him," said Matlin. "He was always available. It was like an open door – an open door to his heart and my heart. And he knew that." "He knows that he's done that to a lot of people," she shared. "But to have that close relationship, I was just very, very fortunate. And I knew that both he and his wife were gold to me. I don't think if I had Henry in my life, I would be here. I don't think I would've made it this far. I don't think so." Hurt and Matlin starred in the 1986 film about a deaf woman's romance with a hearing-speech teacher. Matlin was 19 when she was cast opposite Hurt, 35. While the relationship was plagued with problems, Matlin did credit Hurt for inspiring her to check into the Betty Ford Center after using up every bit of cocaine and marijuana she had in their New York City apartment. However, post-rehab, Matlin realized their relationship would not be the same. "I walked out of that house and never went back," she said in the film. Winkler encouraged a sober Matlin to visit him and his wife Stacey Weitzman at their California home. There, they could "talk." Matlin took up his offer. The actor, who catapulted to fame as "The Fonz," described Matlin knocking on his door. WATCH: 'HAPPY DAYS' STAR HENRY WINKLER SHARES HIS FONDEST MEMORY FROM THE SHOW "'I just broke up with my boyfriend,'" Winkler recalled Matlin telling him in the film. "'Can I stay with you just for the weekend?' 'Sure. Stace, what do you think?' 'Of course.'" "Two years later, she finally moved out!" Winkler chuckled. Matlin said Winkler and his family took her in "as if I were one of their own." Winkler noted that Matlin was not "completely whole at that time." "What I told her was, 'If you know what you want without ambivalence, if you're clear about what you want, everything else will fall into place,'" he said in the film. Not only did Matlin begin to heal, but she also found true love. In 1993, she married Kevin Grandalski, a police officer, at Winkler's home. "You just knew," said Winkler in the film about the romance. "This is different. This is where a home is made. [And] there was no other thing to do, there was no other place for her to get married, except in our yard, in her home away from home." Winkler first saw a 12-year-old Matlin on stage in a Chicago variety show. In the documentary, Winkler recalled how Matlin's mother took him aside and asked if he could warn her daughter from pursuing an acting career because it would be too difficult for her. Winkler replied, "You got the wrong guy." Winkler became a friend and mentor to the then-aspiring actress. Their friendship has lasted for decades. "He provided a place for me to feel safe," she said. "I could always depend on the fact that he was a person who believed in me, genuinely, believed, and helped build my own self-confidence and trust the fact that he allowed me to be open and see the world more clearly. I'm so fortunate… that I was one of the people that he really cares about, truly cares about, genuinely cares about." "He was probably one of the most famous people in the world at times," Matlin beamed. "He was more famous than the President, in my opinion, and one of the most beloved people in the world. So, who would've ever thought that he would take the time and give attention to someone like me, the little girl that I was when he met me, the little deaf girl when he didn't even know American sign language?" "He didn't know anything about being deaf, about deaf culture," Matlin continued. "But you know what? It didn't matter to him. He acknowledged, of course, yes, that I communicated. He didn't ignore the fact that I was deaf, but at the same time, he treated me with love and respect, as anyone should to anyone. And I grabbed that moment when we first met, knowing that he was the real deal." Winkler, 79, said in a statement sent to Fox News Digital, "When we first saw her at age 12, it was evident how powerful and talented she was. She will always be part of our lives." Matlin is the youngest and first deaf best actress Academy Award winner. Her memoir, "I'll Scream Later," was published in 2009. In it, the actress said she was molested as a child and alleged abuse from Hurt during their relationship. "I didn't know that you could ask for help," Matlin told Fox News Digital. "I didn't know that while screaming for help, I didn't know that I could go out and seek out help, as opposed to while it was happening… hoping that somebody would come. But no one did while I was screaming. No one did… I don't want to dwell on that, but that's what happened." Following the book's publication, Hurt issued a statement to Access that read, "My own recollection is that we both apologized, and both did a great deal to heal our lives. Of course, I did, and do apologize for any pain I caused. And I know we both have grown. I wish Marlee and her family nothing but good." The documentary's director, Shoshannah Stern, who is also deaf, told Fox News Digital through an interpreter that she admired Matlin's bravery in speaking before the #MeToo movement. "Everyone had so much doubt," said Stern. "And then asking Marlee, 'Why didn't you leave?' 'Why did you stay in that relationship?' I just felt that they just re-traumatized her… The questions that they asked made it worse, asking, 'Did you think that those events happened to you because you were deaf?' And Marlee continuing to say, 'I didn't know.'… And people just overlooking that comment over and over, not understanding what she meant and her strength." "She didn't know that abuse was abuse at the time," said Stern. "And that's what happens to so many deaf people in the world." The work continues for Matlin, along with telling her story. "I was determined to prove [my critics wrong]," Matlin told Fox News Digital about pursuing a Hollywood career. "It just made me want to roll up my sleeves, even more, to prove to them that I'm a deaf woman who loves acting as much as anybody else… I didn't get into this business for nothing. It was a dream come true. So why shouldn't I be able to do another film?" "But if it happened today, I would've made a lot of noise back then," Matlin reflected. "I didn't know how to speak out against those who… wanted to put me in a negative light… As a result of all those criticisms, I had to grow up so quickly. "I was 19 years old when I got into ['Children of a Lesser God'], I turned 20 during the making of the film, and I had a much older boyfriend. It was my first film, and I was trying to get sober, and everything was coming at once. And they were more interested in pulling me down than all the other things that I was going through." "Marlee Matlin: Not Alone Anymore" premieres June 20.
