Sunday Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Rachel hopes her story of a deaf child will inspire young sufferers
FORMER Hollyoaks star-turned-Oscar nominee Rachel Shenton wants to give hope to thousands of kids by turning her story about a profoundly deaf girl into a feature film.
The Silent Child – which has been shortlisted for an Academy Award in the category Best Live Action Short – tells the tale of deaf four-year-old girl Libby, who lives an isolated life until a social worker, played by Rachel, teaches her sign language.
The 30-year-old actress, from Stoke-on-Trent, was inspired to write the film because of her own family’s experience. When she was
12 her dad Geoff went deaf after receiving treatment for chemotherapy.
For the last 18 months of his life he couldn’t hear at all. Her response was to become an ambassador for the National Deaf Children’s Society.
Rachel said: “This is the first film I have written. It’s incredibly close to me so the writing of the story felt natural.
“I knew the story I wanted to tell. I knew what I wanted people to feel like, to connect to the characters, to know about the subject and to understand it. It is a low-profile disability – you can’t see it and it’s not lifethreatening.
“People don’t know about this subject so ultimately I wanted people to leave the cinema feeling more educated and to spark a conversation.
“Now I’m working on the feature film version. It will be a very different story – three stages of the child’s life, from a little child to adulthood.”
In May, Rachel is screening the film in Parliament and she hopes that sign language will one day be introduced into the national curriculum – a message conveyed at the end of the film.
For the sake of authenticity, Rachel believed the title role had to be played by a child who was profoundly deaf and could use sign language.
A nationwide search involved the auditioning of 100 children before they found their star – eightyear-old Maisie Sly, who had never acted before.
Rachel says that Maisie isn’t fazed by Hollywood, saying: “She is incredibly natural. She has a strange maturity. She is a total joy to be around. We went to the Oscars’ luncheon and we met Steven Spielberg. That was very surreal. He said congratulations and that he was going to watch it.”
Rachel’s fiancé Chris Overton directed The Silent Child, which was made on a £10k budget through crowdfunding. “So we are really proud to even be here,” added Rachel.