Marlee Matlin: The First Deaf Actor to Win an Oscar

At the 1987 Academy Awards, 21-year-old Marlee Matlin was named the winner of the Best Actress award. She was the first Deaf actor to achieve this honor and still remains the youngest winner in the category to this day. 

Born in Illinois in 1965, Marlee experienced hearing loss due to an illness at the age of 18 months. She began acting in a Deaf children’s theater company at age seven, which eventually led to her role in “Children of a Lesser God” in 1986. Her sign-language performance conveyed deep emotion and was highly praised.

No other Deaf actor won an Oscar for acting for the next 36 years, until in 2022, Troy Kotsur won Best Supporting Actor for the film “CODA,” a movie in which Marlee also appeared as his wife.

Marlee continued to portray Deaf characters in series such as “The West Wing” and “Switched at Birth”, and she performed the U.S. national anthem in American Sign Language (ASL) at the Super Bowl in both 2007 and 2016. 

Moreover, she has also been a consistent advocate for the Deaf community, campaigning for broadcast captioning and working alongside the National Association of the Deaf (NAD). During the "Deaf President Now" protests in 1988, she appeared on the program “Nightline” to discuss the movement alongside a student representative.

When she first opened the door to the industry, it was rare for a Deaf actor to have a leading role. Yet today, there are far more productions featuring Deaf actors, and Marlee Matlin stands at the start of that path.