Marlee Matlin
Field: arts
Marlee Matlin recounts her childhood entry into a community theater serving hearing and deaf children, where she landed the lead role and developed dreams of Hollywood stardom despite skepticism about a deaf girl's prospects. She describes actor Henry Winkler encouraging her to follow her dreams, her later Academy Award win, and her ongoing career and life as a working actress and mother, emphasizing that changing attitudes have allowed her to succeed.
Key moments
- 01 Joining a community theater at age 7 and landing the lead in The Wizard of Oz
- 02 Henry Winkler encouraging her to follow her heart despite doubters
- 03 Winning the Academy Award for Best Actress eight years later
- 04 Continuing her acting career and life as a mother despite predictions of failure
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Marlee Matlin at Wilkes University, 2007
A commencement address about refusing limits, following dreams, and changing attitudes.
Speech arc
- 01Community theater
Opening move
- 02The Wizard of Oz
Speech beat
- 03Henry Winkler
Speech beat
- 04Impossible dream
Speech beat
- 05Parents refuse no
Speech beat
- 06Academy Award
Speech beat
- 07Working actress
Speech beat
- 08Attitudes change
Final charge
Beginning: A small stage becomes a big beginning
Matlin traces the address back to community theater, where childhood performance gave her a place to imagine a future.
Theater
At seven, her mother brings her to a community theater serving both deaf and hearing children.
Role
The Wizard of Oz becomes an early scene of confidence, imagination, and belonging.
Dream
By thirteen, she is already telling people she wants to become a Hollywood star.
Matlin traces the address back to community theater, where childhood performance gave her a place to imagine a future.
Limit: Encouragement beats the voices that say no
The speech pivots on adults who refuse to treat deafness as a reason to shrink a child’s ambition.
Mentor
Henry Winkler tells her she can be whatever she wants if she follows her heart and dreams.
Warning
Others warn that a deaf girl should not be encouraged to dream too big.
Support
Her parents and mentors reject the limit and help protect the possibility of a future onstage and onscreen.
The speech pivots on adults who refuse to treat deafness as a reason to shrink a child’s ambition.
Work: A dream becomes craft and persistence
Winning the Academy Award is framed not as a fairy-tale ending but as one step in a durable working life.
Breakthrough
Eight years after meeting Winkler, she stands on a Hollywood stage with an Academy Award for Best Actress.
Critics
She names predictions that her career would be finished and answers them with continued work.
Practice
Acting remains a craft of scripts, sets, roles, adaptation, and showing up again.
Winning the Academy Award is framed not as a fairy-tale ending but as one step in a durable working life.
• Key takeaways •
Dream out loud
Connects to dreams.
Reject small expectations
Connects to courage.
Let support matter
Connects to access.
Keep working
Connects to work.
Change the room
Connects to attitude.
Closing charge
Matlin turns personal experience into a broader argument that doors open when assumptions change.
The world widens when attitudes change
Identity
She describes herself as a working actress who happens to be deaf, refusing pity or limitation as the frame.
Access
The transcript’s most compact claim is that she can do anything except hear.
Charge
Graduates are asked to follow their hearts and dreams instead of accepting the size of other people’s expectations.
Matlin turns personal experience into a broader argument that doors open when assumptions change.
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Transcript
The previously catalogued transcript link is no longer live and is queued for re-sourcing. A video of the address is available above.
Machine transcript available for archive analysis; it is unverified and may contain transcription errors. Machine transcript source ->
Provenance
BROKEN transcript link (checked 2026-06-26): gradspeeches.com is a parked/redirecting domain serving no real content. Provenance: Imported from NPR commencement archive
NPR archive last updated in 2015; destination availability has not been exhaustively rechecked | Transcript URL dead (gradspeeches.com is a parked/redirecting domain serving no real content); video fallback present
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