Why He's No. 69

Michael C. Hall is a North Carolina native and graduate of NYU's Master of Fine Arts program in acting. His most recent performance was on Broadway as the emcee in "Cabaret." Hall has previously starred in nearly a dozen major off-Broadway plays, including "Macbeth" for the New York Shakespeare Festival, "Cymbeline" for the New York Shakespeare Festival at Central Park's Delacorte Theater, "Timon of Athens" and "Henry V" at the Public, "The English Teachers" for Manhattan Class Company, "Corpus Christi" at the Manhattan Theatre Club, and "Skylight" at the Mark Taper Forum.

Back Stage

Though New York City residents savvy to the off-Broadway stages may be familiar with actor Michael C. Hall as a result of his roles in nearly a dozen productions including +Macbeth, +Timon of Athens, and +Cymbeline, television viewers are more likely to recognize the Emmy-nominated talent as the proprietor (along with his brother, Nate [Peter Krause drama Six Feet Under. Born in Raleight, NC, in 1971, Hall graduated from Earlham College before receiving his training as an actor in the NYU Master of Fine Arts acting program. His prowess on the stage led him to appear in off-Broadway productions for The New York Shakespeare Festival, and it wasn't long before he was offered a role on Six Feet Under. Though the show's producers had originally cast Krause in the part, the subsequent difficulty they had in casting the character of Nate eventually found Krause tackling that role, while Hall took on the part of David. Of course, fate has a way of working things out for the best sometimes, and both actors hit their stride in the quirky series, with Hall's multi-layered performance as the closeted David, in particular, lending the show both some of its most poignant moments and some of its most humorous. In 2003, Hall attempted to make the leap to feature films with the John Woo action movie Paycheck, and in 2004, he began work on director Timothy Daly's low-key relationship drama Bereft. Though, with the releases of Paycheck and Bereft, it appeared as if the actor who had thus far achieved the most fame as a closeted funeral director on HBO's Six Feet Under was moving away from television in order to focus on feature work, a return to the small screen in the Showtime crime drama series Dexter found Hall dealing in death on the small screen once again. Cast in the title role of a forensics investigator who secretly moonlights as a serial killer, Hall earned critical acclaim and substantial ratings as he made the transition from playing one who sees that the dearly departed get a respectable send-off to portraying one who helps to keep funeral homes in business.

Forcaste

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; on New Year's Eve in 2008, he eloped with Dexter co-star Jennifer Carpenter, who plays his character's sister Debra Morgan.