Lauren Ridloff

At 46 years old, Lauren Ridloff has this physical status:

Lauren Ridloff (née Teruel; born April 6, 1978) is an American actress and former teacher.

Sarah Norman appears in Children of a Lesser God, as Herba, and in the AMC television series The Walking Dead, she is best known as a former Miss Deaf America.

Early life and education

Lauren Ridloff was born in Chicago, Illinois, United States, on April 6, 1978. She was born deaf to hearing parents, a Mexican-American father, and an African-American mother. Hugo's father Hugo was a counselor at University of Illinois in Chicago. Ridloff's mother was an artist, and he was also a musician. Ridloff grew up in Hyde Park, Illinois. Their infant had developmental delays, but by the time she was two years old, they learned she was deaf. They learned sign language with her and enrolled her in Catholic schools with hearing children. She did a good job in school. She stopped speaking out when she was 13 years old in order for her intelligence to be judged purely on her vocal intelligibility. She attended the Model Secondary School for the Deaf in Washington, D.C., where she was one of the deaf and hard of hearing students. She began investigating the arts, starting with ceramics and becoming involved with drama. Dorothy played Dorothy in a Wiz school production. She served on the cheerleading squad and became one of the first deaf American cheerleaders to compete internationally.

Ridloff decided to enroll at Northridge State University, a university with a large deaf and hard-of-hearing student population due to the National Center on Deafness. She earned her degree in 2001 and majored in English with a specialization in creative writing. She belonged to a local deaf ensemble and began to practice hip-hop dancing while attending college. She began working at the NCOD in May 2000, where she was active in a scheme to expand post-secondary school education for deaf and hard-of-hearing students. She decided to compete in the National Association of the Deaf's Miss Deaf America competition later this year, having been inspired by the event two years ago. She won Miss Deaf Illinois' preliminary competition and then went on to win Miss Deaf America. She was the second consecutive CSUN graduate to win the championship, and she was also the first female contester of either African-American or Mexican-American descent to win the pageant. Shel Silverstein's book The Giving Tree in ASL was among her competition participations. She began attending luncheons and graduation ceremonies as a spokesperson for NAD after winning Miss Deaf America.

Ridloff, a 1999 graduate from CSUN, went to Hunter College in New York to study education with the intention of becoming a children's author. She began teaching kindergarten and first grade at Public School 347 in Manhattan after obtaining her Masters Degree in Education in 2005. She was also involved in deaf community theater and film work for friends. Douglas Ridloff, a student at CSUN, and her two children, both boys and both deaf, were married. She left her teaching career to care for the children. The family lives in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, a New York suburb.

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Acting career

In the 2017 film Sign Gene: The First Deaf Superheroes, Ridloff played a small part as a superpowered agent. She appeared on the production of the 2017 film Wonderstruck as a consultant and was eventually cast in a small role. She appeared in John Legend's lyric video for the song "Love Me Now."

When Kenny Leon began directing a revival of the 1980 play Children of a Lesser God, he recruited Ridloff to teach him in American Sign Language. Joshua Jackson was the male lead in Leon's film, but he didn't have to cast the female lead. Ridloff had been tutoring Leon for more than a year by then. He asked her to replace at a read-through early on, and he offered her the position based on her results. The cast appeared at the Berkshire Theatre Company in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, for the first time. Using her voice, which she hadn't used before she was 13 years old, was one of her most difficult aspects of her job. "Ms. Ridloff likes the playing experience to a crotch shot," the New York Times said, "Ms. Ridloff compares the act of using her voice during the play to a crotch shot." She found greater confidence after a year in the role and as a vocal coach. "It feels liberating to me," she said, "like now I own every piece of myself." [but] I don't see myself ever using my voice on a conversational basis," she continued. "Critics were underwhelmed by the execution, but mesmerized by Ms. Ridloff: "Idloff" was the rood of the tale. On May 27, 2018, the revival was officially ended.

Ridloff, a fan of the TV show The Walking Dead, which premiered in 2010, and had submitted an audition tape to be cast in the film. She was portrayed as Connie in the show's ninth season, which premiered in October 2018. Ridloff appeared in the 2021 Marvel Cinematic Universe superhero film Eternals as the superhero Makkari, who in the comics is a hearing and white man. The role of Ridloff as part of director Chloé Zhao's attempt to broaden casting representation is revised to include a deaf woman of color. Ridloff is the first deaf superhero in the MCU, according to the film. Ridloff took a leave of absence from The Walking Dead, not appearing in six consecutive episodes of the show's tenth season.

At the 41st Media Access Awards in 2020, Ridloff received the SAG-AFTRA Harold Russell Award. The British Academy of Film and Television Arts selected Ridloff as a 2020 Breakthrough Artist alongside 33 other outstanding film, television, and games artists in the same year.

Following Ridloff's appearance in Eternals in 2021, she rejoined Children of a Lesser God's Joshua Jackson to star in a Ava DuVernay-produced romantic drama television series. In May 2022, the network made a three-season commitment to the planned series. Ridloff, as well as DuVernay and Jackson, are now attached as executive producer. Ridloff was one of three deaf actors cast in an episode of the upcoming Fox anthology drama television series Accused, directed by Marlee Matlin in July 2022.

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