ON TOP OF THE WORLD
‘YOU have something on your lip,” Marlee Matlin says, wiping a blob of makeup from this reporter’s mouth as her interpreter stands silently by. “I read lips!” she adds with a smile.
So she does. In 1987 — when up against Jane Fonda, Kathleen Turner, Sigourney Weaver and Sissy Spacek — the “Children of a Lesser God” star became, at 21, the first deaf actress to win an Oscar.
She’s rarely been off-screen since: “The West Wing,” “Dancing With the Stars,” “The Celebrity Apprentice,” “The L Word,” “Switched at Birth” — even a sly turn on “Seinfeld” (“What are you, deaf?” “Bingo!”)
Next stop: Broadway, where the 50-yearold makes her debut Sunday in the Deaf West Theatre production of “Spring Awakening” — a musical about the lack of communication between sexually curious youth and their repressed elders. Playing several different women, Matlin conveys in sign language the lines voiced by her longtime friend and costar, Camryn Manheim.
“She’s the best dressing-roommate you could ask for!” Matlin says over french fries and calamari at the Glass House Tavern, next door to the Brooks Atkinson Theatre.
“You have to see their dressing room — they’re master decorators!” blurts her interpreter, Jack Jason, who does most of their talking. He and Matlin have worked together for 30 years. They joke about celebrating their Dec. 2 anniversary at the corner of 93rd Street and Central Park West, where they met.
Back then, Matlin was living with her “Children of a Lesser God” co-star William Hurt. A reporter was coming that day to interview Hurt, and he didn’t want the press to know he and Matlin were together. His assistant called NYU-looking for an interpreter who could hang out with Matlin and get her out of the house, and Jason answered — only to be asked to take the then 19-year-old Chicago native shopping.
“First he took me to Trump Tower,” Matlin recalls. “I told him to bring it down a notch. Then he took me to Bloomingdale’s . . . finally, he took me to Macy’s, which I loved, because it was just like Marshall Field’s!” They’ve been working together ever since.
Not so she and Hurt. In her 2009 mem- oir, “I’ll Scream Later,” for sale in the theater lobby, she describes the physically abusive two years she spent with him, as he drank and she used cocaine and pot. She also wrote about the sexual abuse — from both a babysitter and a teacher — that led her to drugs and, at 21, into rehab.
She was at the Betty Ford Center when Jason called to tell her she was up for an Oscar. “Nobody knew I was there,” she says. “There was no social media then, no Perez Hilton. Jack said, ‘The press wants to know what you want to say.’ I said, ‘Well, tell them I’ll scream later.’ ” (Hence her memoir’s title.)
She says her “Spring Awakening” co-stars remind her of when she was young. “I’ve told each and every one of them, ‘Don’t be afraid to come to my dressing room and talk,’ ” says Matlin, whose own kids, ages 11 to 19, are at home in LA with their dad and her husband of 22 years, police officer Kevin Grandalski.
“I want to be there for them the same way Henry was always there for me,” she adds. That’s Henry, as in Henry Winkler, the one and only Fonzie. He saw her perform with a Chicago troupe when she was 12, and has guided her career ever since. (“She’s like a second daughter to me,” Winkler tells The Post.) She and Grandalski were married at Winkler’s LA home.
She’s had other helpers along the way, including her “Celebrity Apprentice” boss, Donald Trump, at whose 2011 Comedy Central roast she made a number of penis jokes. “He treated me with respect and humor and was always looking after me,” she says. But is she ready for President Trump?
“I don’t follow his politics,” she says. “Anyone can run for president!” What about his hair? “Who cares! It’s hair!”
She’s also grateful to Fabian Sanchez, her “Dancing With the Stars” partner, even though they placed last on the 2008 season.
“I adore him to this day,” she says. “Everyone thinks I felt the vibrations. I didn’t do that! He just taught me to count the steps . . .
“It must have been fascinating for America to watch a deaf woman dancing, thinking, ‘How does she do this without hearing the music?’ ” she continues. “I was just taught by a good teacher, and I listened.” She pauses, then grins. “To use the term loosely!”
And then she hugs me, grabs her backpack and sprints off to the theater.