By DAILY MAIL REPORTER
Published: | Updated:
The story of the deaf bodybuilder and American Gladiator who died at the age of 40
Year: 2026
Certificate: 15
Shelley Beattie was a professional bodybuilder and an American Gladiator named Siren, and she was deaf. She killed herself in 2008, aged 40. One day, the actress Marlee Matlin (Coda, The West Wing), who is also deaf, stumbled upon Shelley on the internet, couldn’t believe the two of them had never crossed paths, and set out to discover what happened.
This documentary is the story of that search. Like Matlin, Beattie had hearing parents, and that lack of understanding seems to have had a big impact on her when she was young. She threw herself into bodybuilding, turning off her hearing aid in the gym to allow her to completely focus; on stage at competitions, she danced not to the sound of the music but to the feel of the bass. Bodybuilding was her whole life and it seemed like armour.
When Shelley was hired for American Gladiators, she started to step more into her own. Later on, bisexuality, bipolar disorder and drugs played a part in her story. We hear from ex-Gladiators, from Shelley’s long-time boyfriend John Romano and her girlfriend Julie Moisa across this poignant documentary about identity, a film which serves as a reminder that a tough exterior often exists to protect something fragile. (103 minutes)
