Maisie Sly has changed her mind about what she wants to wear to the Oscars this spring. At first she wanted to wear a suit. But now she has spotted the perfect dress — a mint-green confection. “It’s very pretty,” she signs.
She is looking forward to the flight to Hollywood with her mother Elizabeth, too, and is not at all anxious about twirling on the red carpet. Maisie, 6, is the star of The Silent Child, which has made the final five in the live-action short film category — making Maisie one of the youngest actors, and certainly the youngest deaf child, to hope for an Oscar.
She plays Libby, a deaf four-year-old born into a middle-class family who lives in a world of silence. The former Hollyoaks actress Rachel Shenton — whose father went deaf when she was 12 — wrote the script and plays the caring young woman who unlocks Libby’s life.
Last week in her Swindon home, with brother Jack, 8, sister Chloe, 4, and Elizabeth, 31, Maisie used sign language to chat, in between playing with Dixie the cat and rushing to the door whenever a light flashed in the living room — the equivalent of a doorbell ringing. She landed the part of Libby after answering a post on Facebook, where Shenton and her fiancé, Chris Overton, who directed the film, had posted an ad looking for deaf four and five-year-olds.
Maisie shone at an audition in London and now regards Shenton as “a big sister”. In one scene they sign “I love you” to one another — and that is how Maisie feels about Shenton, Elizabeth says. The film has already scooped several awards.
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Maisie does sadness and loneliness heartbreakingly well — keep a hanky ready — and when she starts to learn sign language you see glimpses of the vivacious, funny child she is in real life.
The Sly children are the fourth generation to be deaf. “Maisie’s great-grandparents, grandparents, uncle, mum, dad, brother and sister are all deaf,” says Elizabeth, who met her husband, Gilson, through the Plymouth deaf football team.
The film has a serious message: unlike Maisie, nine in 10 deaf children are born into families who can hear. Unable to communicate, such children can become locked into isolation and silence and never emerge to fulfil their potential. Without early and proper support, says Shenton, few get five GCSEs and many are “lonely and bullied at school”.
The Slys have had their own struggles. Spending cuts have hit the special teaching deaf children need. The family had to move hundreds of miles from Cornwall to Swindon so the children could attend Red Oaks Primary School, a mainstream school with specialist support.
Acting brought light relief. Shenton said one of Maisie’s favourite scenes took place in the swimming pool. The director was shouting instructions, but “she just wanted to play”.
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Right now, signs Maisie, “I want to be a drummer [when I grow up], Jack wants to join the army and Chloe wants to be a princess.” She also wants to carry on acting, ideally with Danny Murphy, another deaf child who is an actor. “He is filming in South Africa and has a chair with his name on it — Maisie was very taken with that,” laughs Shenton.
Maisie is certain the film will win. At the event on March 4 she will be six years and 350 days old, 40 days older than Shirley Temple when she won the academy juvenile award in 1935. Shenton hopes a famous designer will supply the dress; after all, it is the Oscars — and Maisie is a star. She has already shown, without saying a word, that, as Shenton puts it: “Deaf children can do anything they want.”
AND THE WINNER IS... RATHER YOUNG
Anna Paquin, 11, won an Oscar in 1994 for best supporting actress in The Piano. The first millennial to win an Academy Award, she later starred in the hit television series True Blood.
In 1935, Shirley Temple, 6, received the Academy Juvenile Award — an honorary prize created for her — for her ”outstanding contributions to screen entertainment”.
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In 1974, Tatum O’Neal, 10, won best supporting actress for Paper Moon and remains the youngest person to win a competitive Academy Award.
In 1961, at the age of 14, British actress Hayley Mills became the 12th and final recipient of the Academy Juvenile Award for her performance in Pollyanna.