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New York Times
20-06-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Marlee Matlin on Hollywood, Healing and Stories Still Untold
Marlee Matlin is a fighter. At 21, she became the first Deaf performer to win an Oscar for her role as a smart, stubborn custodian in the 1986 film 'Children of a Lesser God.' Though the win thrust her into the spotlight, it did not change the barriers she faced as a Deaf woman, nor did it afford her or other deaf actors the same opportunities as hearing actors. The next Oscar win for a Deaf performer did not occur until 35 years later, when Ms. Matlin's co-star Troy Kotsur won for the 2021 movie 'CODA,' in which they played loving parents to a hearing daughter. The documentary explores the challenges Ms. Matlin has faced throughout her life. The actress said that she battled drug and alcohol addiction and that she was in an abusive relationship with her 'Children of A Lesser God' co-star William Hurt, who died in 2022. After Ms. Matlin wrote about the relationship in her 2009 memoir, Mr. Hurt said in a statement: 'I did and do apologize for any pain I caused.' Throughout her career Ms. Matlin has pushed for more acting roles and has become an advocate on deaf issues such as improving accessibility and representation in mainstream media. When she was asked to participate in a documentary about her life, Ms. Matlin insisted on hiring a Deaf, female director. As a result, the documentary, 'Marlee Matlin: Not Alone Anymore,' is not rooted in sound, and there are no voice-overs — there are only captions — for the American Sign Language conversations. The film's director, Shoshannah Stern, who is also an actress, said the project was an opportunity to show viewers how Ms. Matlin experienced the world. The documentary also calls on Hollywood to be more inclusive of stories like this one. 'I want to make people challenge their assumptions of who should be centered in stories and how we see the world,' Ms. Stern said. 'But that really requires people in positions of power to start saying yes to stories that are being told differently.' Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
New York Times
20-06-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Marlee Matlin Tells Her Own Unvarnished Story
Actors in documentaries about their own lives rarely — perhaps never — speak with the kind of candor that Marlee Matlin brings to Shoshannah Stern's new film 'Marlee Matlin: Not Alone Anymore' (in theaters). This kind of project all too often results in a cagey puff piece, lots of warmed-over memories accented by one mildly surprising revelation, which ensures the movie will make headlines. Not this film. From the start, Matlin speaks with an unvarnished frankness about the loneliness and prejudice she encountered when she burst into public consciousness in 'Children of a Lesser God,' for which she won the best actress Oscar in 1987. For 35 years, she was the only deaf performer with an Academy Award — a record finally broken in 2022, when Troy Kotsur won for 'CODA,' in which he co-starred with Matlin. Now, she says, she isn't alone anymore. But the path to this point was littered with frustrations in a world that still treats deaf people as second-class citizens. Matlin talks about how solitary she often felt, set apart not just from the hearing world but at times from the deaf one, too. She speaks, with nuance but also pain, of her relationship with her 'Children of a Lesser God' co-star William Hurt, who was 16 years older and, she says, abusive at times. (Hurt died in 2022. In 2009, he issued a public apology 'for any pain I caused.') She also addresses the clear anti-deaf bias that surfaces in the news media — demonstrated, pointedly, by archival clips of interviewers saying offensive things — and how it shaped her addiction struggles as well as the way she presented herself in the years following her Oscar win. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
