Marlee Matlin

Marlee Matlin was born on August 24, 1965, in Morton Grove, Illinois, to Libby and Donald Matlin, the latter an automobile dealer. At 18 months old, she lost all hearing in her right ear and 80 percent of the hearing in her left ear due to illness and fevers, and in her autobiography I'll Scream Later she suggests the loss may have been caused by a genetically malformed cochlea. She grew up alongside two older brothers, Eric and Marc, in a Reform Jewish household with family roots in Poland and Russia. She attended Congregation Bene Shalom, a synagogue for the deaf, and after learning her Torah portion phonetically, completed her Bat Mitzvah. She graduated from John Hersey High School in Arlington Heights and went on to attend Harper College in Palatine, Illinois, where she had originally planned to pursue a career in criminal justice.

Matlin's performing career began at age seven, when she played Dorothy in an International Center on Deafness and the Arts children's theatre production of The Wizard of Oz, and she continued appearing with that group throughout her childhood. It was during one of those ICODA performances that she was discovered by Henry Winkler, a connection that led directly to her film debut. She made that debut in the 1986 romantic drama Children of a Lesser God, playing Sarah Norman, a deaf woman reluctant to speak who falls for a hearing man. The role earned her both the Academy Award for Best Actress and the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama. At 21, she remains the youngest actress to win in the Best Actress category at the Academy Awards, and she was the first deaf performer to win an Oscar in any category.

Her television career became the primary arena for her work, as she found more roles available to deaf actors in that medium. She starred as a district attorney in the police drama Reasonable Doubts from 1991 to 1993, earning two Golden Globe nominations for Best Actress in a Television Series Drama. Guest appearances in Seinfeld, The Practice, and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit each brought Emmy Award nominations for Outstanding Guest Actress. She portrayed Carrie Buck in the 1994 television drama Against Her Will: The Carrie Buck Story, marking the first time she played a hearing character, a performance that earned her a CableACE nomination for Best Actress. From 2000 to 2006, she played Joey Lucas on the political drama series The West Wing, and she subsequently appeared in The L Word from 2007 to 2009 and Switched at Birth from 2011 to 2017. She also voiced the character Stella in the animated sitcom Family Guy from 2012 to 2021.

In 2015, Matlin made her Broadway debut in the revival of Spring Awakening. Her stage work traces back to her earliest years in the ICODA children's theatre, but the 2015 production marked her first appearance on a Broadway stage. In 2021, she appeared in the film CODA, for which she and the cast received the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture. In 2009, she received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and her accolades also include nominations for a British Academy Film Award and four Primetime Emmy Awards. A documentary about her life and career, Marlee Matlin: Not Alone Anymore, was released in 2025.

Beyond her acting work, Matlin is a prominent member of the National Association of the Deaf and has been an active advocate for deaf individuals in Hollywood and other industries. Her interpreter is Jack Jason. She has published four works and has received recognition for her advocacy efforts.