cleaning woman

How did “The Shape of Water,” a movie about a mute cleaning woman falling truly, madly, deeply in love with a fish-man, wind up winning the Oscar for best picture?

She worked incognito in jobs around the country at the bottom end of the pay scale: waitress, hotel maid, cleaning woman, a Walmart clerk, averaging about $7 an hour.

At night, posing as friends of the doctor, they returned to the building and convinced a cleaning woman, Maria Martinez, to unlock the door to Fielding’s office.

They later learned that three years earlier a cleaning woman had stumbled on two guests in another room who’d passed out from a leak.

“I had to keep the paint-room door locked to keep the cleaning woman and my daughter and anyone else from coming in,” she said of the basement where she painted.