“When Marlee walked in, she looked so sweet and so nice. I could see she looked a little nervous, but then she was walking into my world. I knew right away, it was going to be a challenge for me. I’d never taught a Deaf person before and I wanted to see what we could create together because I knew all eyes would be on her.”
As far as my eyes went, they were trained on Fabian. If I could see the step, the move, I could start to teach my body how to replicate it.
Fabian made a few adjustments to his teaching style to help us move beyond the fact that I could not hear the music. He used a lot more eye contact. Once I’d learned the mechanics, I was following his eyes and his body. In one of the interviews I did for the show, someone asked me what I heard of the music, and I told them, “Fabian is my music.” That really was true.
A candid moment from behind the scenes at Dancing with the Stars. Fabian and I thought it was hilarious that Maksim Chmerovskiy actually believed he could whisper sweet nothings in my ear.
He also quickly shifted the speakers to the floor and turned up the bass, so that I could feel more of the vibrations. Bill Pugin came along as my interpreter, which turned out to be such a lucky break since Bill had done quite a lot of dancing years ago. He knew the language of swivels and pivots, and that helped in translating Fabian’s instructions to me.
The days were long—often twelve hours of dancing straight. By the end of rehearsals, we’d both collapse on the floor. Many days I wasn’t sure I could drag myself back up. Muscles I didn’t even know I had were screaming at me, “Don’t move, please don’t move again.”
Without even noticing, I lost twenty-three pounds before the series ended and gained the most toned body I’ve ever had. Thank you, Dancing with the Stars.
I’M USUALLY MY own worst critic, and on Dancing with the Stars I made no exception. Long before we were in front on an audience—or the judges—I felt that I wasn’t picking up the routines quickly enough.
Fabian, who was my ultimate cheerleader, didn’t agree: “When Marlee started out, I remember thinking, for me she is an average student—has good rhythm, is picking up the steps. But all of sudden, everything was coming faster and faster. I could throw new choreography at her and she was retaining it faster, reacting to the music faster.
“You could see her personality go into the dance—the way she would do her mouth, she has this gorgeous smile, when I saw it, I could tell she was comfortable with that movement. And when she puts that smile on, you can’t help but know that girl is having a good time!”
Our first dance when the show kicked off in March was, as Fabian described it, “the red-hot cha-cha-cha baby.” With Fabian, I quickly figured out that everything was baby. “No, no, no, baby.” “Like this, not like that, baby.” I got it, baby!
To dance the red-hot cha-cha, I wore a red, sparkly thing with slits here, and more slits there, all designed to enhance the moves you’re making. Creating the lines of the costumes is equal parts art and science, and the wardrobe team for the series are really geniuses.
Fabian and I were the last couple to hit the dance floor. Performing live is, at least for me, always terrifying. On film sets you have multiple takes to get it right. When it’s live, it’s one shot, then it’s over. You are done, finished, kaput. No second chances.
Since we were the last ones on the floor, my stomach had a lot of time to tie itself up—instead of butterflies, I think I had mad, crazy bats!
My daughter Sarah and my husband, Kevin, were in the audience that night, and as soon as I stepped out onto that stage, I could feel their smiles and good thoughts just wrapping around me.
So Fabian and I cha-cha-cha’d until we were breathless. Even though you rehearse ungodly hours and by the time you start performing your stamina is so much stronger, doing that dance in prime time takes all your energy and breath. It’s like a three-minute extreme workout.
When I finished, the applause was thunderous. I could feel it from my head to my toes—it was just electric in that room. As I looked over at Jack, who was coming to the stage to interpret for me, he was wiping away tears, and that touched me so.
It felt as if Fabian and I had done well, but my heart was pounding as we walked over to the judges’ table. If performing live is terrifying, having to face Len, Carrie Ann, and Bruno is a million times scarier. They started talking, Jack started signing, but it took a second for it to sink in—it was good news.
Carrie Ann: “That was almost unbelievable.”
Bruno: “You may not hear, but the music is running through your blood.”
Of course, once you make it through the dance, the judges, and the scores, then you have to spend the next night standing under the spotlight of death waiting to find out whether you’ll be back for another week or going home.
The first week I made it through! And it was on to the quickstep.
Now the quickstep, in addition to being extremely, well, quick, with lots of changes in the footwork, is also a dance you are to perform with little eye contact. Ack! I need the eye contact! Ack! I need the eye contact!
And the judges’ scores: 8, 8, 8.
Yeah!
Back in the greenroom, Samantha Harris was conducting the postdance interviews. She’s a sweetheart, but she just never got it that putting a microphone in my face doesn’t work.
If you watch Dancing with the Stars, you always look for certain moments. One of those is a performance that will bring Carrie Ann to tears. Some people never reach that. I was so happy that I did.
During week four, Fabian and I did the Viennese waltz. I was particularly worried about this dance since it has lots of twirls and being Deaf can play havoc with your balance, I wasn’t sure how well I’d pull it off. Yet I did.
And I got my Carrie Ann moment: “You made me cry, something about that performance truly touched me.”
By week six, I needed a lift. Week five was the samba, and I got really frustrated with myself. I nailed it in dress rehearsal, then missed a step when we went live.
When I’m just being Marlee Matlin the person, you can read my moods pretty easily, and I know the audience and the viewers could just see my energy drop, read the angst in my face. I wanted to go back into the dressing room and beat my head against a wall.
For week six, we got the mambo. Now Fabian is the Mambo King and I didn’t want to let him down. I was already being tough on myself because of what I felt was a less than perfect samba. I needed to get my head out of the bad place.
Calling Henry Winkler! If anyone could shake me out of it, it was Henry.
He stopped by as Fabian and I were rehearsing and gave me a great pep talk to use as part of one segment for the show. But the string of e-mails I got from him through the next days and nights were the best. Not always easy to read—Henry pulls no punches—but exactly what I needed to hear. Here’s a sample of Henry’s tough love:
“Dear Marlee, The audience is with you, but they will start to pick up your sense of doom. You are a very good actress. You are a very good dancer. You have to put the two together and cry only at home unless they are tears of joy….
“No more long faces. Smile. Enjoy. Catch your breath. And be grateful to the Mambo King.
“PS I looked very good in my blue shirt.”
Other e-mails would come, most of them starting with “I had another thought…”
“The distance between the negative and being positive is as thin as a piece of thread.”
“You are a champion. You are a winner in life already. Show THAT to the world.”
“You have to make a decision. A big life decision.”
And then the PS: “PS I think I have to wear that blue shirt more often.”
I tried to drink in all of his advice. I tried to absorb all the amazing love and support that had began pouring in starting in week one from the fans. I tried to lean on the love of my family. But in the end, during the mambo, I lost focus for a second.
In ballroom, just the blink of an
eye, just a second of lost concentration, and you can lose a beat—you lose a beat and you lose a bit of movement and it’s extremely hard to recover.
Fabian says, “From the samba, there was a small mistake, but she couldn’t shake it off. I could see it running through her mind: ‘What if I make another mistake?’
“At the beginning of the mambo, she was supposed to turn to face the audience. I went back that night and watched it over again, and as I’m watching it, she stops turning a quarter turn less. As she was turning, Bruno had his hand going up and down, counting the beats, and I’ve seen him do it with other people. That moment, her eye caught his hand going up and down, and she lost the beat.
“She was just heartbroken, she was so down on herself. I was glad we had to go to New York right away for Regis and Kelly. They wanted us to do the mambo and she did it perfect! She nailed it. And when we performed it on the finale, she nailed it again!”
As hard as we were all working on our dances each week, you really do grow close to the other contestants. Everyone really does support one another. But the guy who always had my back was that sweetheart Christian de la Fuente. Going into week six, Christian bet me a hundred bucks that I wouldn’t get voted off. He was absolutely sure I’d make it through. Unfortunately he was wrong.
With the verdict rendered, I walked over to stand in front of the judges for the final time. Tom Bergeron, who hosts the series and stitches together so many loose moments with his gentle humor, came over and took my hands.
He has been a friend for many years, and when he told me how proud he was of all that I had done on the show, it was all I could do not to break down in tears.
Even though I didn’t make it all the way to the finals, I look back on it as one of the great experiences of my life. Everywhere I go, even now, I’m swarmed by fans that supported me during the show. I was overwhelmed by the number of e-mails I received from ordinary people telling me how much what I had done had inspired them. Many had stories of how life had dealt them a bad hand, but they’d been afraid to fight back, and now, after watching me, they weren’t.
As an actor, you always want to touch the audience. I just had no idea that I could do it on the dance floor.
Fabian, the fabulous Mambo King, became a great friend, one I know that I will have for a lifetime. We had an absolute blast doing the show, and I’m the luckiest gal on earth to have had Fabian as my partner.
In December, I pulled out my dancing shoes, practiced my moves, and headed out on the Dancing with the Stars tour with Fabian, the man who first taught me the groove and move! A cross-country road trip with my dancing buddies, and all my glittery barely-theres to shake and shimmy into…I couldn’t wait.
54
NOT LONG AGO, I took Fabian on a tour of my old neighborhood.
Our house in Morton Grove, Illinois, where so many of my memories were made, looked smaller somehow. The trees, newly planted when my family first moved in, are towering now. Kids still play football and baseball in the street.
It brought back a wave of memories—meeting Liz, playing Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz at seven, meeting Henry, falling in love with Mike, fights with my mom, seeing the world open up with closed-captioning, slipping into another world of drugs and addiction, being cast in Children of a Lesser God, leaving my childhood and my family for New York, then L.A., all the characters that have come into my life, all the opportunities, the challenges, building a family of my own.
I have traveled so many miles and done so many things that I never dreamed I would do in the years since I left Morton Grove. Like the house, I am both the same and different now.
One thing that hasn’t changed, I want to experience as much of life as I can, pile up moments—good and bad—as if there were no tomorrow. No stopping, no regrets.
I have been given an extraordinary life thus far, and I am nowhere close to done with it yet.
Every day brings new challenges, creative juices that keep churning inside me, characters whose lives and whose stories I want to tell, new chapters to write.
No matter what I do next in my career, acting will always be my first choice, my first love.
I think back to the time I stood on a stage when I was seven and began telling a story through sign and movement and felt the applause and saw the smiles. That moment—that connection—touched something deep inside me, a hunger that will never go away.
And though I am Deaf, it is not as if I live in silence. Thousands of thoughts are always buzzing around in my head.
That’s what defines a life, or at least my life—emotions, feelings, ideas—having them, but also sharing them.
Telling my children I love them each day. Calling Liz or Ruthie or Jack or another friend to share a funny moment. Walking on a warm summer evening hand in hand with my husband. Seeing my brothers and their families, my parents or Kevin’s, who’ve become like my own second family.
As I look at my life, one of my greatest challenges has been my relationship with my mother. I know, without question, that both of my parents absolutely love me. I’ve never doubted that, and it is the best gift that any parent can give his or her child.
But I also look back and search my mind and my heart for the moments with my mom that are not colored by the fights that have dogged us for a lifetime. In the distance I see myself as a child sick with the flu, spending the day under the covers with a fever and my mom bringing hot soup to my bed. Driving me through a snowstorm to see Liz. My mom always in the audience at the theaters of my life, applauding but fearful it will all go up in smoke and a little envious that she didn’t get cast in the starring role.
I have a handful of faded memories like that—both sweet and sad.
I look at the wall that I see separating us, my mother and me, and wonder if maybe it was my first and most important lesson in life: to face that wall and not back down. To find my way despite it—push through it, jump over it, run around it—so that all the other walls that I would face afterward would never seem insurmountable.
In recent years, I’ve tried to get to a place where I simply accept that the closeness I’ve wished a lifetime for with my mom is probably beyond us now. She and my dad are both growing older and are not all that well.
Many of the things that used to send me spinning into anger, I just set aside these days. Instead I try to focus on the love that is there and believe that she is giving me all that she can. And I try to make sure both my parents know how much I love them, how much they mean to me.
My life is rich and I am blessed, and I am grateful. That I am Deaf is just a footnote. It is a part of who I am, but far from all of who I am.
And the dark secrets that I kept locked away in my heart for all those many years are now out in the open.
Today, I can face those old wounds head-on. I know they cannot defeat me—the drugs, the babysitter, the teacher, the actor, the deafness, and the rest. I am stronger than all of it.
Looking into all those dark corners has been a little like giving birth—despite much pain, if you breathe and let yourself embrace it, absorb it, you’ll come through to the other side and the payoff is spectacular.
So I find myself now, not at the end of my story, but at the beginning of a new story, and I can’t wait to see what life has in store for me. Bring it on…I’m ready.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
THIS BOOK HAS been forty-three years in the making. For me it was about telling the truth. My truth. It was just time. And though I strived to tell the truth about myself, there are so many people I must thank because I couldn’t have done it without them.
Betsy Sharkey—thank you for your brilliance. This absolutely could not have happened without you. When can we start on the sequel? Kidding!
Jack Jason—you came into my life at the perfect time and I can’t imagine what I would have done without you. Thanks for believing in me. Thanks for putting up with me. You are simply a saint. I know I would not be where I am today without you. No pork!
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br /> To my agent Alan Nevins—thank you for all you’ve done. Your encouragement, your nagging, your words of wisdom. You rock!
To Jen Bergstrom and Tricia Boczkowski at Simon Spotlight Entertainment—you’ve made writing this book a breeze; the best publisher and editor ever.
Evelyn Caldwell—I bow to you. Thank you for looking out for me everyday when it comes to my piggy bank.
Carol Bruckner—what can I say but thank you CWAA? You are the only person who can swear better than me but make it sound more palatable. I heart you.
Steve LaManna and the crew at Innovative—good show. Thank you for keeping my dream alive.
Howard Bragman, Brad Cafarelli, and Lisa Perkins—thanks for twenty years’ worth of fifteen minutes. You guys give the best PR.
To Mom and Dad—how could I be anything but a Matlin? I love and am proud to be your daughter. For all your patience in all that I put you through, I love you.
To Eric, Glo, Zach, and Arielle—nobody could ask for a better family. Thank you for all your love and support over the years.
Marc and Jay—I’ve kept a secret all these years: Apples was Catholic. I love you so much.
Lynne Smith—I love you and the whole family.
Samuel Block—thank you for introducing me to the wonderful world of Sign Language.
Liz Tannebaum—you are my sister. I love you.
Mike Lundquist—I will always cherish the good times together.
Bob Michaels—if only…oh, never mind!
Patricia Scherer—I couldn’t have been Dorothy without you. Thank you for all you do for Deaf children everywhere and their dreams.
Henry Winkler—thank you for helping me to follow my dream. I love you.
Stacey Winkler—I promise I’ll clean my room tomorrow. I love you, too.
Sister Mary Elizabeth Endee—you were the best teacher ever.
William Hurt—despite the good times and the tough times, I could not be where I am without having known you.
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