Matlin first acted when she was seven years old as Dorothy in the "Wizard of Oz" for a children's theater. As a child, she acted many times with the children's theater. Henry Winkler saw her at one of these shows and asked her to act in "Children of a Lesser God" (1986). "Children of a Lesser God" is about a deaf woman who works cleaning a deaf school. A new teacher comes to the school, and he tries to get her to speak out loud. They fall in love, but because she is deaf and he is hearing, there are some problems. For this movie, Matlin won an Academy Award for Best Actress and Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Drama.