In an interview for The Ottawa Citizen recently, Oscar winning actress Marlee Matlin tells Jay Stone “I don’t really consider myself any different from the other thousand thirtysomething actresses who happen to not get work because they’re not Julia Roberts or Sandra Bullock or Nicole Kidman.” Stone describes Matlin as “independent, free-spirited and outspoken… She is also a thirtysomething actress in Hollywood, still fighting to get work in a town that eats up thirtysomething actresses.” Matlin, who was about to come to Ottawa to speak at the ‘Unique Lives and Experiences’ series at the National Arts Centre as part of a series of talks across North America, tells Stone during a phone interview in March that “Life is not wing to be handed to you… You always have to work for (successes) and fight for them… I relate some experiences growing up where people were more than willing to just shut the door on me. And I was not willing to have that door shut… It not only happens because I’m deaf… It happens because I’m a woman, it happens because I’m thirtysomething, it happens because I have a family, it happens because of all kinds of things…” Matlin won an Oscar when she was 21 years old for appearing in her first movie, ‘Children of a Lesser God.’ Subsequently she also won a Golden Globe, appeared in the ‘Reasonable Doubts’ TV series, appeared on ‘Picket Fences’, ‘Seinfield’ and her current recurring role as a pollster on ‘The West Wing.’ “Television wants me more,” Matlin also says, “I don’t find feature films are as accessible to me as television is. Maybe because the stakes in feature films are higher so that they’re not willing to take a risk with a deaf actor. Maybe because television is more intimate and it makes more sense to have real people and therefore I represent that… I go where the best work is available for me.” She is also writing a children’s book, called ‘Caution: Deaf Child Crossing,’ loosely based on her childhood friendship with a hearing girl.