Rebecca Hall

Rebecca Maria Hall, born in London on 3 May 1982, is a British-American actress and director. She is the daughter of American opera singer Maria Ewing and Sir Peter Hall, the English stage director and founder of the Royal Shakespeare Company. Her mother was born in Detroit to a mixed-race African-American father and a Dutch mother, making Hall a descendant of John William Ewing, who was born into slavery and later became a prominent figure in the black community of Washington, D.C. after the American Civil War. Hall's parents divorced in 1990, and she has five paternal half-siblings: stage director Edward Hall, producer Christopher Hall, actresses Jennifer Caron Hall and Emma Hall, and set designer Lucy Hall. She attended Roedean School, where she served as head girl, and later studied English literature at St Catharine's College, Cambridge, leaving in 2002 before completing her final year. During her time at Cambridge she was active in student theatre, founded her own theatre company, and was a member of the Marlowe Society, performing in productions alongside housemate Dan Stevens.

Hall's first screen appearance came in 1992, when at the age of nine she played young Sophy in her father's television adaptation of Mary Wesley's The Camomile Lawn. Her professional stage debut followed a decade later in 2002, when she starred as Vivie in her father's production of Mrs. Warren's Profession at the Strand Theatre in London, a performance that earned her the Ian Charleson Award in 2003. In 2003, her father staged a season of five plays at the Theatre Royal in Bath to mark fifty years as a theatre director, and Hall appeared in two of them.

Hall made her feature film debut in 2006 as Rebecca Epstein in the adaptation of David Nicholls's Starter for Ten, the same year she gained wider recognition playing Sarah Borden in Christopher Nolan's thriller The Prestige. Her Hollywood profile rose further when she starred as Vicky in Woody Allen's Vicky Cristina Barcelona in 2008, earning a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress in a Motion Picture Musical or Comedy. That same year she appeared in Ron Howard's historical drama Frost/Nixon as the girlfriend of David Frost. In 2009 she appeared in the Channel 4 miniseries Red Riding: In the Year of Our Lord 1974, for which she won the British Academy Television Award for Best Supporting Actress in 2010. She received a further BAFTA Television Award nomination for Best Actress for her role in the BBC/HBO production Parade's End in 2012.

Her film work continued with Ben Affleck's crime drama The Town in 2010, the British ghost film The Awakening in 2011, and the Marvel Cinematic Universe film Iron Man 3 in 2013, in which she replaced Jessica Chastain as Maya Hansen. She appeared in Joel Edgerton's directorial debut The Gift in 2015 and in Steven Spielberg's fantasy film The BFG in 2016. That same year she played real-life television news reporter Christine Chubbuck in the biographical drama Christine, a performance that drew significant critical praise. In 2017 she portrayed Elizabeth Holloway Marston, the psychologist who inspired the character of Wonder Woman, in Professor Marston and the Wonder Women. Hall starred in and co-executive produced the horror-thriller The Night House in 2021, and appeared in the MonsterVerse film Godzilla vs. Kong the same year, returning for Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire in 2024.

Hall made her directorial debut in 2021 with the period drama Passing, based on Nella Larsen's 1929 novel of the same name. She also wrote the screenplay and co-produced the film, which was informed by her own mixed-race heritage and her African-American ancestors who passed as white. The film premiered at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival to critical acclaim, and Netflix acquired its distribution rights for approximately sixteen million dollars.

On Broadway, Hall appeared in the 2014 production of the play Machinal, for which she received a Theatre World Award. Originally from London, she brought to the role a stage background rooted in classical British theatre, shaped in part by her early training and her father's influence as one of the foremost directors of his generation.