Maybe my way of communicating through sign made me more in tune with my body and how it moved. Who knows? I just know when I saw a stage for the first time, I wanted to be on it.

What parent has it easy? I just never make the difficulty of it an obstacle. I just do it.

Differences are scarier now. The dollar isn't so guaranteed if you don't follow what they see as the norm. But I don't moan about it. I just keep working.

I'm a proud person who happens to be deaf. I don't want to change it. I don't want to wake up and suddenly say, 'Oh my God, I can hear.' That's not my dream. It's not my dream. I've been raised deaf. I'm used to the way I am. I don't want to change it. Why would I ever want to change? Because I'm used to this, I'm happy.

During a visit to California, when a friend of my grandmother's told my parents that I must be deaf because I was not responding to sounds, my father was absolutely convinced that I was simply being stubborn.

I'm not really deaf; I just faked it to win the Oscar KIDDING.

I am writing my second novel for children for Simon and Schuster.