Paul Raci

“My mother, when I was doing stage acting in Chicago, would come to see any show that I was in. There was no access to communication. There was no sign language interpreting, but she'd just sit there in the front row and just try and read lips of every character on the play that I was doing.”

“Having deaf parents shaped my whole life because back in the day there was no technology that could help them.”

“So that is a shift I've seen from growing up: watching my parents feel oppressed by the hearing man, to now deaf people being empowered with their own identity. That's very refreshing.”

“There's plenty of deaf actors, tons of them that are talented, that deserve to work.”

“I grew up in the Chicago Club of the Deaf. The Santa Claus I knew was a deaf Santa.”

“I moved out here when I was 40 and guess what, they are not looking for 40-year-olds in Hollywood.”

“I love Bill Murray, he's the same age as me. I don't want to take any roles away from Bill, but I certainly would like to act with that guy.”

“I worked in many deaf ministries.”

“I bought my house in Burbank, California not by being an actor. I've been a certified legal interpreter in the Los Angeles and Chicago court system for 35 years. That's how I've lived my life and gotten by.”

“I love going back to those silent films because my father who is totally deaf loved Buster Keaton. Loved him! More than Charlie Chaplin. He loved the pathos in his face. My father just loved that man.”

“You've got to just persevere, even when the believing isn't in you.”

“John Williams was a Vietnam veteran and I'm a Vietnam veteran, I did two tours in Vietnam. So knowing that, that he wrote a coming of age story about a young man in 1860... and what he goes through in that journey is exactly what my journey was in Vietnam.”

“I've always been a sign language interpreter in the court system, and running out to do an audition so I could do one line in a movie or two lines in a TV show, or get ready to do full-length play like 'Of Mice and Men' at Deaf West Theatre.”

“Growing up in the 50s, there was no wheelchair access to sidewalks ramps, there was nothing like that. Nobody thought about that - that slowly changed.”

“You're going to see more inclusion in casting in this town, in Hollywood. You're going to see a lot more differently abled people, people that use wheelchairs, blind, deaf, there's going to be a lot more of those kind of protagonists. And you're going to watch those journeys unfold on the screen.”

“It's a different world in Los Angeles because people approach acting in different ways; it's all about movies and TV, and I was all about the theater.”

“I'm a Coda, a child of deaf adults. I belong to an international organisation. There's Codas all over the world.”

“We're in Hollywood. There's a lot of people, a lot of very talented people.”

“I've been trying to stay out of this social media thing. Although it pulls me back in every time I let go.”

“Information is education. Education can change lives.”