Marlee Matlin Informative Speech

Marlee Matlin was born in Morton Grove, Illinois on August 24, 1965. At the age of 18 months she lost all of the hearing in her right ear and 80 percent of the hearing in her left. Roseola Infantum caused her hearing loss. Marlee is jewish and has two older brothers. She is a deaf American actress and has starred in many movies and television shows such as “Children of a Lesser God” in 1986, “My Name is Earl” (a television show on NBC) in 2007, and “Sweet Nothing in My Ear” in 2008. Marlee studied criminal justice at Harper College in Palatine, Illinois. She had always had a passion for acting though and kept her passion all the way through college. Her first film debut was playing the role of Sarah Norman in the movie “Children of a Lesser God.” After this movie was released, Marlee won an Academy Award for best actress and a Golden globe award for best motion picture drama actress.
When she was in Nicaragua filming for a movie she visited many deaf children and has continued this tradition ever since. She has traveled all around Europe to countries such as Germany, Italy, and England to visit deaf people and to give speeches.
Marlee is also a spokeswoman for the National Captioning Institute. In 1995 she testified at a Congressional hearing, and helped get a law passed that requires all TV sets 13 inches or larger to be manufactured with built-in chips to provide "Closed Captioning" on their screens. She also serves on the boards for many charitable organizations in the deaf community. Some of these organizations include Very special arts and the starlight foundation. Most of the organizations she serves in have to do with benefiting