Based on a three-layer polysilicon surface micromachining process and some experience formulas of adaptive optics, an electrostatically actuated microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) deformable mirror (DM) with 16 actuators and continuous surface is designed and fabricated. Both static and dynamic characteristics of the prototype are tested using a scanning white light interferometer ZygoNewView7300. The result from the static test shows that the displacement of the actuator is 0.667 μm at 150 V, the interaction between the neighboring actuator is 9%, and the position repeatability of the surface of DM is 10%. At the same time, the result from the dynamic test shows that the response time of the prototype is less than 30 μs and a cosine curve is observed under a sine driving signal. The resonance frequency of the actuator is about 36 kHz. This type of DM can be used for free space optical communication, laser beam shaping, wavefront correction, projection, biomedical imaging and human eye aberration correction.