Michael C. Hall

Michael Carlyle Hall (born February 1, 1971) is an American actor and singer best known for his roles as Dexter Morgan, the titular character in the Showtime series Dexter, and David Fisher in the HBO drama series Six Feet Under. These two roles collectively earned Hall a Golden Globe Award and three Screen Actors Guild Awards.

He has also acted in Broadway shows and narrated audiobooks.

His father died of prostate cancer in 1982 at the age of 39 when Hall was 11 years old.

He has said of this, "There was a very one-on-one, immediate family relationship, my mom and I."

Hall graduated from Ravenscroft School in Raleigh in 1989, and from Earlham College, a liberal arts college in Richmond, Indiana, in 1993.

While he has said that he had planned to become a lawyer, he later acknowledged that he had never formed a serious intent to go to law school.

He began his acting career on Broadway in the revival of Cabaret and appeared in a variety of shows in the mid- to late 1990s.

As part of the Texas Shakespeare Festival in the summer of 1995, he played Lancelot in Camelot, Lysander in A Midsummer Night's Dream, and Claudio in Much Ado About Nothing.

Born and raised in Raleigh, North Carolina, Hall graduated from New York University's graduate acting program at the Tisch School of the Arts in 1996.

Hall graduated from New York University's graduate acting program at the Tisch School of the Arts in 1996.

Hall discovered acting early in life: he performed in What Love Is when he was in second grade at Ravenscroft School.

In fifth grade, he began singing, first in a boys' choir, and later, in high school, in musicals, performing in standards such as The Sound of Music, Oklahoma!, and Fiddler on the Roof.

While a student at Earlham College, he continued acting, starring in Cabaret and other productions.

Hall's professional acting career began in the theater.

Off-Broadway, he appeared in Macbeth and Cymbeline at the New York Shakespeare Festival; in Timon of Athens and Henry V at The 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 the role of Paris Singer in the workshop production of a Sondheim musical (titled Wise Guys at the time, and in later versions, Bounce and then Road Show. His character's songs and function were transferred to the character Hollis Bessamer in the final version.) In Los Angeles, Hall appeared in Skylight at the Mark Taper Forum.

In 1998, Hall performed in William Shakespeare's Cymbeline, in the role of Posthumus, which ran from August 4 to 30.

In 1999, director Sam Mendes cast Hall as the flamboyant Emcee in the revival of Cabaret; this was Hall's first Broadway role.

Mendes suggested Hall for the role of closeted David Fisher, when Alan Ball began casting the TV drama Six Feet Under.

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.

He has also starred in films including Paycheck (2003), Gamer (2009), Mark Felt: The Man Who Brought Down the White House (2017), Game Night (2018), and In the Shadow of the Moon (2019).

In 2021, he reprised his role of Dexter Morgan for the miniseries revival Dexter: New Blood.

Hall was born in Raleigh, North Carolina.

His mother, Janice (née Styons) Hall, is a mental health counselor at Lees-McRae College, and his late father, William Carlyle Hall, was a systems engineer manager for IBM.

Hall had one older sister who died in infancy before his birth.

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.

In 2003, Hall toured as Billy Flynn in the musical Chicago.

In a 2004 interview, Hall spoke about his experience in the wake of his father's death: "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."

"Everything opened up for me in Cabaret," but, Hall reported in a 2004 interview, "It slammed shut for David."

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.

Hall starred in and co-produced the Showtime television series Dexter, in which he played a psychopathic blood-spatter analyst for the Miami Metro Police Department, who moonlights as a serial killer/vigilante.

Jennifer Carpenter played his adoptive sister, Debra Morgan.

The series premiered on October 1, 2006, and ended its run in 2013.

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, 2008, and again in 2010.

For his work on Dexter, Hall was nominated for five Emmy Awards for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series from 2008 to 2012.

The show itself was also nominated for Emmy citations in the Drama Series category in the same years.

After months of rumors, on April 18, 2013, Showtime announced via social media that season eight would be Dexter's final season.

Hall also voiced Dexter Morgan in the animated web series Dexter: Early Cuts.

Aside from his acclaimed roles on Six Feet Under and Dexter, he starred in the Broadway musical Hedwig and The Angry Inch from 2014 to 2015.