‘LESSER’ STAR NOT DEAF TO OPPORTUNITY

NEW YORK — As she wanders through SoHo searching for unusual photo settings, Marlee Matlin suddenly bolts ahead to a modern metal sculpture hidden between two decaying warehouses. She grins as the photographer nods approval. She removes the battered leather hat and tinted glasses that hide her hazel eyes. Reluctantly she climbs the sculpture. This is her first photo session and she hams it up, flashing a smile framed by dimples two inches deep.

The playfulness suddenly ends. “That’s not me--this is!” she says emphatically in sign language as she replaces her hat and glasses.

Defiant and volatile--the 20-year-old deaf actress comes on as her own person. She poses again, but this time, her way.

Matlin’s life appears to imitate art. She is the star of the film version of the celebrated (with a Tony Award) Broadway drama “Children of a Lesser God,” which Paramount Pictures will release Sept. 26 in New York, Los Angeles and Toronto and in 200 more theaters on Oct. 3. It’s a love story about two people, one of whom is deaf.

Matlin plays Sarah Norman, the rebellious deaf custodian at a school for the deaf who falls in love with the school’s speech therapist, who is played by William Hurt. They live together, a couple struggling to do what many hearing couples can’t--communicate.

Now, off-camera, Matlin and Hurt are living together, exploring a world of silence.

Ever since the film started shooting last August in the tiny town of Rothesay in New Brunswick, Canada, Matlin’s life has flipped 180 degrees. The film promises to thrust her into the spotlight.

Producers say they spent six months actively searching for a talented, sensuous deaf actress to play Sarah. They contacted institutions for the deaf throughout the U.S., Canada, the United Kingdom and Sweden.

“We rejected thousands of photos, including one of Marlee Matlin,” said Candy Koethe, assistant producer of “Children.” Finally they saw a video tape of Janice Cole playing Sarah in a Chicago performance of “Children” and were enchanted by her young co-star--Marlee Matlin. Matlin’s screen test with Hurt in Los Angeles convinced the producers. “Marlee took to the camera, like a fish to water,” said Koethe. “ Afraid is not in her vocabulary.”

When the film wrapped in November, Matlin moved into Hurt’s unpretentious, comfortable Central Park West apartment, now equipped with a typewriter telephone machine (TTY) that prints messages so Matlin can “speak” with friends. They’ve also installed a special white light that flashes when the door bell rings and a fire and burglar alarm with a warning light. “Bill wants to teach me to use his computer. Then I can send electronic messages to friends who don’t have TTY machines,” Matlin said.

The couple has broken the sound barrier. Hurt, who won an Oscar for his performance in “Kiss of the Spider Woman,” learned sign language for his role in “Children.” Actors tend to pick up sign language readily, using their faces and bodies as if it were a theatrical performance. “Bill and I have no language problem,” explains Matlin, who unlike Sarah in the film, also reads lips and speaks fairly intelligibly.

At the trendy Cavaliere restaurant on the Upper West Side, Matlin appeared in faded jeans, T-shirt and sneakers. When questions were addressed to her signer, Jack Jason--”Ask her this” or “What does she think about that?”--Matlin intervened immediately. Her sign language was agitated: “Deaf does not mean dumb. Speak directly to me so I can read your lips. And don’t refer to me as ‘she.’ We hearing impaired are normal people. We just communicate differently.”

This was her second interview; the first was for a small paper in Canada during the shooting of the film. She was curious, firing both questions and answers with machine-gun rapidity, as Jason, a graduate student at New York University, signed.

“I’ve always had big dreams and I’m not afraid to chase them. I’m hungry. I want to gobble up life. I just can’t get enough. I want to travel all over the U.S. and visit Europe and Israel.” Some of the crew on “Children” were French-Canadians and Matlin became fascinated with the French language. “I imagine French sounds beautiful. Bill taught me a few words. Now I want to learn French sign language.”

In animated sign language, she explained, “I like doing things my way. I’m a rebel. As a kid I drove my parents and teachers crazy. I hated tests and rules. I guess I have a Zorba spirit because I like being free and doing what I want. And right now, I’m very satisfied.”

But life wasn’t always satisfying. “I used to be a very angry deaf person, like Sarah in ‘Children.’ I was angry that I would never hear again. I was angry at the world. I even wrote a letter to President Ford asking why he didn’t have closed captions for his TV speeches. He didn’t reply.”

The Matlin family tried making life as normal as possible for their feisty daughter. Her father--a Northbrook, Ill., car dealer--and mother enrolled their child in acting classes. Matlin played Dorothy in “The Wizard of Oz” when she was 9. “Acting helped release my frustrations. It taught me to express myself. And unlike, Sarah, I didn’t go to an institution for the deaf, in a world run by people who didn’t understand me. Sarah was emotionally scarred because her hearing family treated her like an embarrassment. My family is supportive.”

Matlin was “mainstreamed,” attending public schools with special programs for the hearing impaired. “I have all kinds of friends, hearing and non-hearing. Why should people be categorized? We’re all people--why should the hearing impaired be conditioned to have limited lives and boring jobs? We don’t have to be emotionally or educationally malnourished. Why aren’t there more deaf lawyers and doctors and fewer postal clerks?”

Matlin is totally deaf in one ear and 80 percent in the other. “I heard my last sounds when I was a baby. I try to remember hearing, but I can’t.”

When she was 18 months old, she got a high fever when the family was flying to Los Angeles to visit her grandmother. “When my grandmother was baby-sitting me, she noticed I didn’t respond when she called my name. My parents refused to believe anything was wrong. But when we returned to Chicago, they took me to an audiologist.”

What she would listen to if she could hear for one hour? Matlin became pensive: “Music. Mozart, whoever he is, and Bach.”

Then her face lit up: “Billy Joel. I love the words to his songs, I’ve memorized them. I want to hear his music. And I want to hear the voices of my family and conversations of people in Central Park and the sounds of birds and trees. And God’s voice,” she paused. “No. No, I already can hear God’s voice.”

Central Park is her favorite New York haunt. “I’m solar powered and that’s where I go to play. Bill and I love biking and playing baseball and people watching. We go there with his son Alex.”

She calls New York a wonderful center for deaf culture. “I go to on- and off-Broadway plays that are interpreted for the deaf and it’s a Mecca for subtitled foreign films.”

She’s made an assortment of acquaintances: deaf actors, writers, some of Hurt’s friends. “And I love shopping--I can’t stay out of the stores. I have a full life.” As Sarah puts it in “Children,” “Deafness isn’t the opposite of hearing--it’s a silence full of sound.”

“New York constantly bombards me with stimuli. When I get overloaded, we go to Bill’s New Hampshire house for fishing and canoeing.”

Sometimes she gets frustrated by her invisible handicap. “Today when I told the taxi driver, ‘72nd and Broadway,’ he started talking to me. I interrupted and said, ‘I’m deaf. I can’t hear you.’ But he continued chattering. Many people get impatient with the deaf. They don’t understand that even though some of us can speak, we can’t hear. I hope ‘Children’ will help bridge the gap between deaf and hearing cultures.”

She’s seen the rough cut of the film and thinks it will contribute to consciousness-raising about the hearing impaired. “But” she emphasized, “some of our problems represent the difficulty of all human communication.”

There are 20 million hearing impaired in the United States and 2.5 million are profoundly deaf like Matlin. Impairment of hearing is the single more prevalent chronic disability in the United States, but Matlin points out, “Hearing impairment is a neglected and misunderstood problem.”

The actress is apprehensive about doing publicity for the movie. “It’s scary. I don’t like the idea of selling myself or answering superficial questions.” Now she’s grappling with how to do TV interviews. “I don’t know whether to use signing or try talking. I wonder if the audiences will understand me.”

In one sign-language hand movement, she can communicate a complex idea that can take five words in English. She thinks the film will be a success but worries, “I could be famous for a few months and then fall on my face. There aren’t many roles for deaf actresses.”

Her idol, Phyllis Frelich, won a Tony Award for the stage version of “Children,” which is based loosely on Frelich’s life with hearing husband Robert Steinberg. “She’s such an inspiration because she’s hearing impaired and made it to the top on sheer talent.” (According to Koethe, “Phyllis Frelich and the producers agreed she had grown out of the role, and that Sarah should be played by a younger actress.”)

Matlin has been planning to study at the National Theater for the Deaf in Waterford, Conn., where Frelich is a founding member.

“After the summer, I have no plans. I’ll go where life takes me. I’m an adventurer. I’m only 20. Life has a lot of flavors and I want to sample them all.”