Michael C. Hall's Biography

Michael Carlisle Hall (born February 1, 1971) is a Golden Globe- and Emmy Award-nominated American actor, best known for his roles as David Fisher in the HBO drama series Six Feet Under and Dexter Morgan of the Showtime series Dexter.

Michael C. Hall was born in Raleigh, North Carolina, Hall grew up an only child, a sister having died in infancy before his birth. When he was 11 his father died of cancer, and in a 2004 interview he recalled,
"Certainly, for a young boy, there's no good age, but I think I was on the cusp of a time in my life where I was starting to reach puberty, to relate to my father. To have him ... Something gets frozen. As you revisit it for the rest of your life, it's sort of this slow but hopefully sure crawling-out of that frozen moment."

Hall attended Ravenscroft School in Raleigh, graduating from high school in 1989. He graduated from Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana, in 1993. He later attended New York University's Master of Fine Arts program in New York City. In 2002, he 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 and filed for divorce in 2006; it was widely reported in 2007 that Hall is dating his Dexter co-star Jennifer Carpenter.

Hall's 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 New York Public Theater, The English Teachers at the Manhattan Class Company (MCC), 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, which has metamorphosed into Bounce. 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.

In 1999, director Sam Mendes cast Hall as the flamboyant Emcee in the revival of Cabaret, his first Broadway role. Mendes also directed the film American Beauty, written by Alan Ball, and he suggested Hall for the role of deeply closeted David Fisher when Ball began casting the TV drama Six Feet Under. "Everything I opened up for Cabaret," Hall reported in a 2004 interview, "I slammed shut for David."

Hall's work in the first season of Six Feet Under was recognized by a 2002 Emmy nomination for an Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series and 2002 AFI Award nomination for Actor of the Year. In addition, he shared in the Screen Actors Guild nomination for best ensemble cast all five years that the show was in production, winning the award in 2003 and 2004.

In 2003, Hall toured as Billy Flynn in the musical Chicago. His only film credit is the 2003 thriller Paycheck, and he also appeared in the 2003 TV movie Bereft. In 2005 he returned to Off-Broadway theatre in the premiere of Noah Haidle's Mr. Marmalade, playing the title character, an emotionally disturbed little girl's imaginary friend.

Hall is currently starring in the Showtime television series, Dexter, which revolves around Dexter Morgan, a Miami police blood spatter expert who moonlights as a vigilante serial killer. The series' first season premiered on October 1, 2006, its second season began on September 30, 2007, and its third season started September 28, 2008. For his work on the series, Hall was nominated for the 2007 Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in a TV Drama and renominated in 2008 for a Golden Globe in the same category. Hall won the 2007 TCA award for Individual Achievement in Drama. Hall has also been nominated for a 2008 Emmy Award for Actor in Drama Series for his work in Dexter. Dexter has been nominated for a 2008 Emmy in the Drama Series category.

In a 2006 interview, Hall discussed his approach to the character of Dexter, saying:
I think Dexter is a man who… a part of himself is very much frozen, or arrested in a place that is pre-memory, pre-conscious, pre-verbal. Something very traumatic happened to him, he doesn’t know what that is. And I think on some level he wants to know. He denies his humanity, he describes himself as someone who is without feeling, and yet I think that he maybe suspects — in a way that maybe isn’t even conscious yet when we first meet him — that he is in fact a human being ... Dexter's a unique killer in that his father saw his dark impulses, shined a light on them, and told Dexter that he saw them, he accepted them, that Dexter is good and that he is worthy of love. And I think that's what enables him to focus his energies in this unique way.