The tragic family story that inspired Hollyoaks star Rachel Shenton’s Oscar-winning film
Her dad Geoff had been waiting for a train when he missed an announcement about a change of platform — and realised he had suddenly become profoundly deaf
WHEN Rachel Shenton picked up her Oscar for the Best Live Action Short last night, she thanked her mum for her support.
But it was a dramatic event in her dad's life which proved life-changing for her family – and set her on a path to Oscar glory.
Her dad Geoff had been waiting for a train when he missed an announcement about a change of platform — and realised he had suddenly become profoundly deaf.
Former Hollyoaks actress Rachel, 11 at the time, said: “He couldn’t find out what the new platform was because he couldn’t hear what people were saying.
“He just needed someone to write it down but no one knew what the problem was. Seeing something like that happen when you’re a child is difficult.”
Although her father could still speak and later learned to lip-read, the experience made Rachel, 30, determined to learn sign language.
Last night she signed her acceptance speech after picking up the gong in for The Silent Child, which she wrote and starred in.
The drama, directed by Rachel’s fiancé Chris Overton, is about a four-year-old deaf girl, born to hearing parents, who feels isolated in the world.
Speaking to The Sun before the Academy Awards, Rachel was coy about her chances of winning.
She said: “It would be really good for this subject to be more high-profile and in front of a mainstream audience, which I believe it should be.”
The story was mainly filmed at Tunstall Stych Farm, in Rachel’s home village of Caverswall, Staffs, and was paid for through crowdfunding.
Its leading lady is six-year-old Maisie Sly, who is deaf and won the part after her hearing parents answered Rachel’s Facebook ad for a deaf child actress.
Speaking in sign language, Maisie said: “It was hard work because sometimes I had to film things again and again.
“I wanted to show people that deaf children can do anything.”
She added: “I think we’re going to go to the Oscars.”
While the storyline is based on a friend who Rachel met in America, her passion for raising awareness of the struggles faced by deaf people came from her late father.
She said: “Dad tried to put on a brave face for us and pretend everything was fine but it meant a huge adjustment for the family.
“There are so many everyday things that you take for granted, such as answering the telephone or chatting round the meal table.”
It is not clear what caused Geoff’s deafness, but for the last 18 months of his life he could not even hear with the help of hearing aids.
Rachel said: “One explanation was that it was a side-effect of successful chemotherapy treatment he’d had for throat cancer, but that was years earlier.”
After deafness struck, Rachel watched as Geoff, who ran a haulage firm, suddenly struggled to drive, unable to hear sirens or car horns.
She said: “I witnessed my superhero dad for the first time seem vulnerable and I noticed how easy it was for people to leave him out, not intentionally but in a group conversation made up of speaking and listening.
“When someone’s ears don’t work, how included can they be?”
And so, at 16, she started to learn sign language. She persevered for five years, eventually becoming a qualified interpreter. She recalled: “I found it a helpful way of dealing with what had happened.
“It made me more aware about the things my dad might have gone through.”
Rachel was also pursuing an acting career. Having started drama and dance lessons at six, she went on to land small parts in Waterloo Road and Holby City before Hollyoaks came along in 2010 with the role of glamorous schemer Mitzeee Minniver.
During her three years in the Channel 4 soap Rachel started working with the National Deaf Children’s Society. She said: “I’d followed their work for a few years and just said if there was anything I could do to help, let me know.
“I’ve been actively involved in fundraising and campaigns ever since.” That includes a sponsored skydive and climbing Mount Kilimanjaro, in Tanzania.
Rachel is also a patron of the charity dDeaflinks Staffordshire, for which she completed a ten-day fundraising trek across the Great Wall of China.
And she is continuing her mission to help deaf people. One of her biggest concerns is the lack of provision for deaf children in mainstream schools, with figures showing 78 per cent of them do not receive additional support.
She said last year: “The statistics of children failing GCSEs is far too high and completely avoidable.
“In 2003 the Government recognised sign language as its own language, yet 14 years later we still don’t learn sign language in schools but we learn French, German, Spanish and more.
“There is a huge lack of awareness within education in mainstream schools and I will do everything I can to change that.”
Rachel’s commitment to deaf causes continued when she was cast in American TV drama series Switched at Birth in 2014, playing a student teacher who was fluent in sign language.
Her three years in the groundbreaking teen drama included an entire episode conducted in sign language. Rachel recalled: “American sign language is quite different from British, including the entire alphabet, so it meant some extra learning.”
Living in LA for months at a time, she became pals with Brit TV host and fellow expat Kelly Brook, and developed a taste for the healthy Californian lifestyle.
She said: “Healthy food is more accessible there. It’s easy to get a smoothie or a really healthy meal.
When I come home I invariably put on a few pounds, then run it off again afterwards.”
She added: “There can be a social pressure on women to look a certain way, but as long as I’m happy with myself, then it doesn’t matter.
“Like all women, I put on my jeans sometimes and think they’re a bit tight, so I go for an extra run.”
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And she always seemed unlikely to succumb to the Californian fitness world’s size-zero fixation.
Rachel is now back in the UK and has been filming the second series of BBC2 comedy White Gold, but in LA in 2015 she said: “I miss my mum and my family most of all but in terms of food, I miss proper tea, baked beans, Wrights pies and Staffordshire oatcakes with cheese and bacon.”
