Academy Award-winning actress Marlee Matlin will join ASHA Convention-goers in New Orleans next month when she receives the Association's Media Award in Appreciation for International Communications. Matlin will be honored during the Convention at the Nov. 16 Awards Ceremony, which will begin at 6 p.m. and will also feature ASHA Honors, Fellows, and other award winners.
When she was 18 months old, Matlin contracted roseola and, due to complications from the illness, lost 80% of her hearing in one ear and sustained total deafness in the other. But her hearing loss has not stopped Matlin, a Chicago native, from becoming an award-winning actress, playing both characters with hearing loss and characters who can hear. "I have always resisted putting limitations on myself, both professionally and personally," she says. "The only thing I can't do is hear. I am proud to be a deaf person."
Matlin began acting as a child and was eventually discovered in a Chicago stage production of "Children of a Lesser God." She reprised her "Children of a Lesser God" role in the 1986 film for which, at age 21, she won a Best Actress Oscar--becoming the youngest actress ever to receive the award, and one of only a handful to receive the award for a film debut. Since that breakthrough performance, Matlin has acted in many feature films and on television. Most recently she has appeared on the TV dramas "The West Wing" and "Gideon's Crossing," the popular children's show "Blue's Clues," and the ABC movie "Kiss My Act."
Next year, Simon and Schuster will publish Matlin's children's novel,
Caution: Deaf Child Crossing
. Matlin is also an advocate and a board member of many charitable organizations. Since 1998, she has been the national spokesperson for VITAC, the largest provider of closed captioning, and she was instrumental in the passage of federal legislation requiring all televisions to be equipped with close captioning technology.
"As a mother, actress, and community activist, I can say that I wouldn't be where I am today without the benefits I received from audiologists and speech-language pathologists with whom I worked as a child growing up in Chicago," Matlin says. "With their assistance in helping me use my residual hearing, I have been able to lead a life that is both rewarding and nearly barrier-free."