SHORT TAKES : Deafness Can Help, Actress Says

Deaf actress Marlee Matlin says she would like to hear music or talk on the phone but doesn’t mind not being able to hear “people talking nonsense” or “beeping horns.”

In fact, she says, “if I woke up one day and I became hearing, I think I would freak.”

“I’m used to the silence. The quiet sounds. And that’s what I like,” she said in an interview with author-neurologist Oliver Sacks in the February issue of Self magazine.

Sacks, whose book “Awakenings” is being made into a movie starring Robin Williams and Robert De Niro, asked Matlin if she thought her deafness gave her acting a special quality. “I think my biggest advantage in some respects is to be deaf,” Matlin said. “Because I can translate the art by seeing it instead of listening to it.”