Millicent Simmonds (born March 6, 2003) is a deaf American actress who starred in the 2018 horror film A Quiet Place and its 2020 sequel A Quiet Place Part II.
2011
She had read the deaf-themed juvenile novel Wonderstruck when it was published in 2011.
When open casting for the film began, her former drama teacher shared the news with her, and she auditioned for a role in the film.
She competed with over 250 others.
When she won the role, she moved to New York City with her mother and her younger siblings to film Wonderstruck.
She used American Sign Language interpreters to communicate on set and also received a tutor to continue schoolwork while filming.
Vanity Fair's Charles Bramesco said of her casting, "A Utah native without any major film credits to her name, young Simmonds is expected to make quite a splash both as a new face in the industry as well as an icon for deaf and otherwise sensory-disabled actors."
2015
After completing sixth grade, she mainstreamed at the Mueller Park Junior High School in the fall of 2015.
She has performed at the Utah Shakespeare Festival in Cedar City, Utah, and her primary film experience before Wonderstruck was a deaf student's short, "Color the World".
2017
Her breakout role was in the 2017 drama film Wonderstruck.
For Wonderstruck and A Quiet Place, she was nominated for several awards for best youth performance.
Simmonds was 12 years old when she was cast for the film Wonderstruck, which was then released in 2017.
When Wonderstruck premiered at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival, the Associated Press's Jake Coyle said Simmonds's screen debut was "hailed as a breakthrough".
Simmonds was subsequently nominated for several awards for best youth performance (see accolades).
The Associated Press also recognized Simmonds as one of eight actors who were Breakthrough Entertainers of 2017.
2018
In addition to her film roles, Simmonds has had television appearances in Andi Mack (2018) and This Close (2019).
She made her Broadway debut in 2023 with the play Grey House.
Simmonds also advocates improving accessibility for the deaf, including designing a lip-reading face mask.
She pushes for better deaf representation in entertainment.
Simmonds grew up in Bountiful, Utah in the United States.
She has four siblings; two older and two younger than her.
When Simmonds was two months old, an accidental medication overdose caused permanent hearing loss for her.
Her mother learned American Sign Language and taught the family so they could communicate with her.
Simmonds said without her family using ASL, "I wouldn't have a relationship with my own family, I wouldn't have communication."
Simmonds also has a cochlear implant.
Simmonds's mother also encouraged her to read books extensively.
When Simmonds was three years old, she started attending the Jean Massieu School of the Deaf, and around third grade, she started its drama club.
Her first play was in A Midsummer Night's Dream as Puck.
In 2018, Simmonds starred in the horror film A Quiet Place as the deaf daughter of a hearing couple, played by John Krasinski and Emily Blunt.
While the producers did not specifically plan to cast a deaf actress to play the deaf daughter, Krasinski, who was also the director, pushed to have a deaf actress.
Simmonds and her family answered Krasinski's questions for writing a screenplay about a family with a deaf child.
The filmmakers hired an ASL interpreter for Simmonds, so that signed and spoken language could be interpreted fluently on set.
Simmonds helped teach her fellow actors to sign.
In 2018, Simmonds appeared in a two-episode arc in the third season of the Disney Channel television series Andi Mack.
She had first appeared as an extra in the first season, and the series creators invited her back for a recurring role.
For her arc, Simmonds taught the other actors how to use ASL, and the showrunners decided to show her scenes involving ASL without providing subtitles so viewers could focus on figuring out the sign language.
In one of the episodes, Simmonds also spoke for the first time ever on-camera, responding audibly "I like you" in response to Asher Angel's character Jonah signing "I like you" to her character.
Simmonds said of the spoken dialogue, "I can't even remember how it was brought up or who had the idea, but I remember my mom asking me how I felt about it, and I told her I thought I could try. I was actually pretty nervous about it. I don't use my voice a lot in public."
In the following year, Simmonds appeared in an episode of the second season of This Close.
2020
In the third quarter of 2020, Simmonds's father got a job promotion, and Simmonds and her family moved from Bountiful, Utah to a neighborhood north of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
