Michael Carlyle Hall is an American actor, known for his role as Dexter Morgan in the
Showtime TV Network Dexter, and as David Fisher on the HBO drama series Six Feet Under.
In 2010, Hall won a Golden Globe Award and a Screen Actors Guild Award for his role in
Dexter.
Early life Hall was born in Raleigh, North Carolina.
His mother, Janice Hall, is a guidance counselor at Lees-McRae College, and his father, William
Carlyle Hall, worked for IBM.
Hall grew up an only child, a sister having died in infancy before his birth.
He has said of this: "There was a very one-on-one, immediate family relationship, my mom and
I." His father died of prostate cancer in 1982 at the age of 39, when Hall was 11 years
old.
In a 2004 interview, he stated: Hall attended Ravenscroft School in Raleigh,
graduating in 1989, and from Earlham College, a liberal arts college in Richmond, Indiana,
in 1993.
He has said that he planned to become a lawyer but later admitted to never actually intending
to go to law school.
Hall then attended New York University's Graduate Acting Program at the Tisch School of the
Arts, graduating in 1996.
Career Early in life Hall discovered acting, performing
in What Love Is while in the second grade at Ravenscroft School.
When he was in the fifth grade, he began singing in a boy's choir, then to musicals in high
school, performing in standards such as The Sound of Music, Oklahoma!, and Fiddler on
the Roof.
Hall's professional acting career began in the theater.
Off-Broadway, he appeared in Macbeth and Cymbeline at the New York Shakespeare Festival, and
in Timon of Athens and Henry V at The Public Theater, The English Teachers at the Manhattan
Class Company, and the controversial play Corpus Christi at the Manhattan Theatre Club.
He also performed in the workshop production of what was then known as Sondheim's Wise
Guys, later versions of which were titled Bounce and, finally, Road Show.
He sang the role of Paris Singer; this character's songs and function in the play were transferred
to the character Hollis Bessamer in the final version of the play.
In Los Angeles, he appeared in Skylight at the Mark Taper Forum.
He also was part of the Texas Shakespeare Festival the summer of 1995.
He played Lancelot in Camelot, Lysander in A Midsummer Night's Dream, and Claudio in
Much Ado About Nothing.
Stage During August 4–30, 1998, Hall performed
in William Shakespeare's Cymbeline in the role of Posthumus.
In 1999, director Sam Mendes cast Hall as the flamboyant Emcee in the revival of Cabaret,
his first Broadway role.
In 2003, Hall toured as Billy Flynn in the musical Chicago.
In 2005 he returned to Off-Broadway theater in the premiere of Noah Haidle's Mr. Marmalade,
playing the title character, an emotionally disturbed little girl's imaginary friend.
In 2014, he returned to Broadway in the play The Realistic Joneses starring in the role
of John Jones.
Six Feet Under Mendes suggested Hall for the role of closeted
David Fisher when Alan Ball began casting the TV drama Six Feet Under.
"Everything opened up for me in Cabaret," but, Hall reported in a 2004 interview, "It
slammed shut for David."
Hall's work in the first season of Six Feet Under was recognized with a nomination for
an Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series and for an AFI Award nomination
for Actor of the Year in 2002 for his role as David Fisher.
In addition, he shared in the Screen Actors Guild nominations for Outstanding Performance
by an Ensemble in a Drama Series all five years that the show was in production, winning
the award in 2003 and 2004.
Dexter
Hall starred in and co-produced the Showtime television series Dexter, in which he played
the eponymous character, a blood-spatter analyst for the Miami Metro Police Department who
moonlights as a vigilante.
Jennifer Carpenter played his adoptive sister, Debra Morgan.
The series premiered on October 1, 2006, and ended its run in 2013.
For his work on Dexter, Hall was nominated for five more Emmy Awards for Outstanding
Lead Actor in a Drama Series, in 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2012.
The show itself was also nominated for 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, and 2012 Emmy citations
in the Drama Series category.
He won the 2007 Television Critics Association Award for Individual Achievement in Drama.
Hall was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Performance by an Actor in a TV Drama
in 2007 and again in 2008, winning the award at the 67th Golden Globe Awards in 2010.
Also in 2010, he won a Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Male
Actor in a Drama Series.
After months of rumors, on April 18, 2013, Showtime announced via social media that season
eight would be the final season of Dexter.
On January 16, 2014, Showtime President David Nevins said there have been discussions for
a Dexter spinoff series that would take the character in a different direction and not
continue the previous series.
Nevins said that they would only do the show if Michael C. Hall agreed to return.
Hall said he would be open to returning for a spinoff series however said "I can't even
wrap my mind around that.
And it's all just theoretical until there is some sort of script reflecting somebody's
idea of where it could possibly go.
But it's hard for me to imagine what that would be.
Yeah, as far as playing Dexter again for an undefined amount of time, that's a little
daunting to consider.
But doing another television series — there's a lot of amazing stuff on TV.
I don't want to do that right away.
But I wouldn't say never to that."
Film Hall's film credits include the 2003 thriller
Paycheck, the 2009 science fiction thriller Gamer, the 2011 comedy Peep World, and the
2011 drama The Trouble with Bliss.
In 2013, he played the part of David Kammerer in the film Kill Your Darlings, directed by
John Krokidas.
Michael has signed on to make a film adaptation of Joe R. Lansdale's cult novel Cold in July.
Jim Mickle is set to direct.
The film premiered at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah.
Personal life On May 1, 2002, Hall married actress Amy Spanger;
he played Billy Flynn opposite her Roxie Hart in the Broadway musical Chicago, the summer
after their wedding.
The couple separated in 2005 and filed for divorce in 2006.
On December 31, 2008, he eloped with Jennifer Carpenter, who played the character of Dexter
Morgan's adoptive sister, Debra Morgan.
They dated for a year prior to getting married.
In December 2010, Hall and Carpenter released a statement announcing that they had filed
for divorce after having been separated "for some time," The divorce was finalized in December
2011.
Since September 2012, Hall has been dating Morgan Macgregor, who was an associate editor
at the Los Angeles Review of Books.
Cancer On January 13, 2010, Hall's agent and spokesman
confirmed that he was undergoing treatment for a form of Hodgkin's lymphoma.
In an interview, Hall said that it was quite upsetting to learn of his cancer when he was
38 years old as his father had died from cancer at age 39.
However, he was grateful that they found the cancer at its early stages, which made it
a lot easier to treat and cure.
Hall accepted his Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild Award in 2010 while wearing a
knitted cap over his bald head, having lost his hair due to chemotherapy.
On April 25, 2010, Carpenter announced that Hall was fully in remission and was set to
get back to work for a new season of Dexter.
Charity He is the face of the Somalia Aid Society's
Feed The People campaign and has also worked with Kiehl's skin care line to do a limited-edition
line that benefits the Waterkeeper Alliance, an environmental nonprofit that works toward
clean and safe water worldwide.
In 2011, Hall was the celebrity spokesperson for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society's "Light
the Night Walk" fundraising campaign.
Filmography Film
Television Awards and nominations
See also List of select cases of Hodgkin's Disease
References
External links Michael C. Hall at the Internet Movie Database
Michael C. Hall at Emmys.com