Last year, Michael C. Hall, who is viewed by most of America as Dexter Morgan, was diagnosed with a deadly form of cancer: Hodgkin’s Lymphoma.
Now 39, he has stopped chemotherapy and, as of today, his cancer is in remission, according to People.
When Hall was 11, his father died of prostate cancer at age 39. When Hall was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s at 38, he felt his own mortality paralleled with his father’s: “I think I’ve been preoccupied since I was 11, and my father died, with the idea of the age 39: Would I live that long? What would that be like?” Hall said in an interview with the New York Times.
Hall received the diagnosis while season four of Dexter was still being shot, but kept the diagnosis under wraps until post-production. The next day, he began chemotherapy.
Although Hall was being treated for a deadly form of cancer, the filming of season five was not interrupted in the least. The season premier of Dexter is scheduled for Sept. 26, 2010, on Showtime.
Having overcome Hodgkin’s Lymphoma and surpassing age 39, Mr. Hall looks back at the parts that he has taken on in the past, playing characters with repressed emotions such as David Fischer on Six Feet Under and Dexter Morgan on Dexter.
“The fact that I’ve been called upon to play these characters is probably not a complete coincidence,” he says. “I have my own repressed people in my life that I’ve drawn on, and had my own tendency toward repression. Maybe it has to do with not knowing quite what to do with the storm of feelings that accompanied my father’s death. Maybe it’s a learned behavior,” Hall said in an interview with the New York Times.
Michael C. Hall was born Feb. 1, 1971, in Raleigh, North Carolina. He was raised an only child, his sister having died in infancy before he was born. His father, William C. Hall, died at age 39 when Michael was 11.
Hall was interested in acting from a very young age, performing a part in “What Love Is” when he was in second grade. When Hall was in the fifth grade, he joined a boys choir and, before long, he merged his singing and acting and began performing in musicals.
Hall went to school to be a lawyer, but his career path was changed when he attended New York University’s Master of Fine Arts program. From then on, he acted in various plays and eventually landed roles on television, the most notable being his role as Dexter Morgan on the Showtime series Dexter.
In 2009, Hall began doing voiceovers for various Dodge commercials. He can be seen/heard in commercials for the Dodge Challenger, Charger, and Grand Caravan.
In 2006, Hall narrated a documentary called Mysteries Of The Freemasons.
Hall has received five awards for his acting in Dexter, most notably a Golden Globe for Best Actor and the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance.
Hall accepted his Golden Globe wearing a knitted cap to cover his head because he lost his hair during chemotherapy.
Sources:
Newly Invigorated, Facing Adversaries – New York Times
Michael C. Hall: I Always Wondered Whether I’d Live To Age 39 – People
Michael C. Hall – Wikipedia
