Troy Kotsur has become the first deaf male actor to win a competitive Oscar, winning the Best Supporting Actor prize for his work on “CODA.”
Kotsur is preceded only by Marlee Matlin, his “CODA” co-star and on-screen wife, as the only other deaf individual to have won an Oscar. She won Best Actress for her work in “Children of a Lesser God” in 1986.
“This is amazing to be here on this journey,” Kotsur said through an interpreter as last year’s Best Supporting Actress winner, Yuh-Jung Youn, held his Oscar so he could sign his speech. “I really want to thank all the wonderful deaf theater stages where I was allowed to develop my craft as an actor.”
He added, “This is dedicated to the deaf community, to the CODA community, to the disabled community. This is our moment.”
Kotsur plays Frank Rossi in “CODA,” a deaf fisherman from Gloucester, Massachusetts, with two children, one of whom is deaf (Daniel Durant) and the other a hearing daughter (Emilia Jones) who wishes to pursue an education as a singer as part of her school’s choir. Kotsur has won acclaim since the film’s debut at Sundance in 2021 for not only his tender performance but also the character’s hilariously vulgar sensibilities.
In an interview with TheWrap in the wake of his nomination, Kotsur explained that despite being from Arizona and never setting foot on a fishing boat, as well as hardly being as profane as his character generally is, the personality that goes into Frank Rossi is all his own.
“If someone else created the signs, it would be their personality, not mine,” he said. “So it was important to have that organic choice, to have that gut feeling and essence of the character. ASL often tops English in many ways because it’s more detailed, it’s more visual than you can even imagine, especially with vulgarity.”
While the Deaf community does not view it to be a disability, the only other performer with a disability to win an Oscar was Harold Russell, also in the Best Supporting Actor race for “The Best Years of Our Lives” from 1946. Russell lost his hands during World War II and was given two hooks to serve in their place. In William Wyler’s film, Russell portrayed a veteran like himself adapting to life back home post-war.
Up next for Kotsur is a project called “Flash Before the Bang” in which he will play the coach of a high school team of Deaf track stars. While the film had been in development for some time, Ben Affleck and Matt Damon’s Pearl Street Films came aboard the project as producers back in August. Kotsur will star in the film alongside his real-life wife Deanne Bray and “Deaf U” host Nyle DiMarco.
Kotsur got his start acting as part of Deaf West Theater, which combines deaf and hearing performances on stage, and he quite recently got the chance to appear in an episode of “The Mandalorian.”
