Marlee Beth Matlin was born on August 24, 1965, in Morton Grove, Illinois, to Libby (Hammer) and Donald Matlin, an automobile dealer, and has two older brothers. Her family is of Russian Jewish and Polish Jewish descent.
Despite losing much of her hearing at the age of eighteen months, Marlee's deafness never held her back from pursuing her passion for acting. She began performing in a children's theater company at the age of seven, playing the iconic role of Dorothy in "The Wizard of Oz".
As an adult, Marlee continued to defy the limitations imposed by her deafness, studying criminal justice at Harper College in Palatine, Illinois, and maintaining her passion for acting after graduating. Her hard work paid off when she attracted notice for her performance in a production of the Tony Award-winning play "Children of a Lesser God", which led to her being cast in the movie version Children of a Lesser God (1986).
This was her movie debut, and she won the Academy Award for Best Actress, a testament to her talent and perseverance. While shooting her next movie Walker (1987) in Nicaragua, Marlee took time to visit both hearing and hearing-impaired children, a tradition she continued through her travels to Germany, England, Italy, Australia, Mexico, Canada, and more.
Marlee's interest in the criminal justice field also played a role in her on-screen career, as she portrayed an assistant D.A. on the television series Reasonable Doubts (1991). Off-screen, she married police officer Kevin Grandalski on August 29, 1993, and they have four children: Sarah (born 1996),Brandon (born 2000),Tyler (born 2002),and Isabelle (born 2003).
In 1994, Marlee was nominated for an Emmy Award for her performance as Laurie Bey on the television series Picket Fences (1992). She is also a spokeswoman for the National Captioning Institute and testified at a congressional hearing in 1995, helping to pass a law that requires all television sets 13 inches or larger to be manufactured with built-in chips to provide closed captioning on their screens.
As a devoted advocate for deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals, Marlee serves as the national spokeswoman for the largest provider of television closed captioning and has spoken on behalf of CC in countries such as Australia, England, France, and Italy. She also serves on the boards of several charitable organizations, including Very Special Arts, the Starlight Foundation, and other charities that primarily benefit children.
As someone who loves children so much, it is only fitting that she has four of her own. Professionally, Marlee has even tried producing, being the executive producer for Where the Truth Lies (1999).
