Rebecca Hall

Rebecca Hall (birthname: Rebecca Maria Hall) is one of her British generation’s most acclaimed female actors while gaining similar acclaim for her debut as director/writer/producer of the period drama, Passing (2021), and began her striking film career as co-star opposite James McEvoy, Alice Eve, Charles Dance, and Benedict Cumberbatch in Starter for 10 (2006), directed by Tom Vaughan and written by David Nicholls, adapting his novel. Hall had her first prominent turn in Christopher Nolan’s thriller, The Prestige (2006), with Hugh Jackman, Christian Bale, Scarlett Johansson, and Michael Caine, and grossed $109 million on a $40 million budget for Touchstone Pictures/Warner Bros.

Woody Allen cast Hall as one of the two title characters in his comedy, Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008), co-starring Javier Bardem, Penelope Cruz, and Scarlett Johanssen, earning Hall her first major award nomination with a Globe nod for Best Actress. Hall’s next collaboration with a major director was with director/producer Ron Howard as part of the cast of the Peter Morgan-written political drama, Frost/Nixon (2008), with Frank Langella, Michael Sheen, Kevin Bacon, Toby Jones, Matthew Macfadyen, Oliver Platt, and Sam Rockwell, but lost money for distributors Universal Pictures/StudioCanal with a pallid $27.4 million globally.

Rebecca Hall joined British director Oliver Parker’s cast for the Oscar Wilde adaptation, of Dorian Gray (2009), with Ben Barnes, Colin Firth, Ben Chaplin, and Emilia Fox. Hall once again jumped The Pond for her first American indie movie, writer-director Nicole Holofcener’s comedy, Please Give (2010), starring Catherine Keener, Oliver Platt, and Amanda Peet, and premiered at the Sundance Film Festival.

Hall co-starred with star/director/co-writer Ben Affleck in the Boston-based crime thriller, The Town (2010), with Jon Hamm, Jeremy Renner, Blake Lively, Titus Welliver, Pete Postlethwaite, and Chris Cooper, taking away a big haul for Warner Bros. with a $154 million global gross. Hall’s next American indie project was as co-star in writer-director Dan Rush’s comedy-drama, Everything Must Go (2010), adapted from Raymond Carver’s 1978 short story, “Why Don’t You Dance?”, and starring Will Ferrell.

Rebecca Hall gained her first lead role in the British supernatural drama, The Awakening (2011), directed by Nick Murphy, and co-starring Dominic West, Imelda Staunton, and Isaac Hempstead-Wright, which premiered at the Toronto Film Festival.  Hall joined fellow Brit, director Stephen Frears, for the comedy-drama, Lay the Favourite (2012), in which she portrayed sports gambler Beth Raymer, whose memoir was the basis of D.V. DeVincentis’s script, co-starring Bruce Willis, Catherine Zeta-Jones, and Joshua Jackson, and which premiered at the Sundance film festival.

Hall made her only appearance in a Marvel superhero movie as part of the ensemble of co-writer/director Shane Black’s sequel, Iron Man 3 (2013), starring Robert Downey Jr., Gwyneth Paltrow, Don Cheadle, Guy Pearce, and Ben Kingsley, and grossing a powerhouse $1.2 billion worldwide. Hall then co-starred with Eric Bana and Riz Ahmed in the U.K./U.S.-backed political thriller from Working Title Films, Closed Circuit (2013), directed by John Crowley, and grossing $6.3 million for distributors Focus Features/Universal Pictures.

Rebecca Hall starred opposite Alan Rickman and Richard Madden in co-writer/director Patrice Leconte’s A Promise (2013), his tepidly received screen version of Stefan Zweig’s 1929 novel, Journey into the Past, but lost money after premiering at the Toronto film festival. Hall co-starred with Johnny Depp in one of her biggest-budget ($150 million) projects and a Warner Bros. box-office bomb, Transcendence (2014), helmed by debuting director Wally Pfister, and with a cast including Morgan Freeman, Kate Mara, Cillian Murphy, Cole Hauser, and Paul Bettany.

Hall joined another debuting director, actor Joel Edgerton, for the psychological mystery-thriller, The Gift (2015), also written and co-starring Edgerton, with Jason Bateman as lead, and grossing a robust $60 million globally. Hall earned some of her strongest reviews and award attention for her striking lead performance in the Antonio Campos-directed drama, Christine (2016), in which Hall portrayed TV news reporter Christine Chubbuck, the first to kill herself on air, and which featured Michael C. Hall, Tracy Letts, J. Smith-Cameron, and Morgan Spector, and which premiered to acclaim at the Sundance film festival.

Rebecca Hall was cast by Steven Spielberg for his fantasy-adventure for Disney based on Roald Dahl’s novel, The BFG (2016), with Mark Rylance, Ruby Barnhill, Rafe Spall, and Bill Hader, but which was one of Spielberg’s few box-office failures with a $195 million gross against a $140 million budget after premiering at the Cannes film festival. Hall further demonstrated her range as the co-lead in the intimate ensemble of writer-director Oren Moverman’s drama, The Dinner (2107), premiering at the Berlin Film Festival and co-starring Richard Gere, Laura Linney, and Steve Coogan.

Hall was star-producer for the first time with writer-director Brian Crano’s American indie rom-com, Permission (2017), co-starring Dan Stevens and premiering at the Tribeca Film Festival. Hall was then co-star with Luke Evans, Bella Heathcote, JJ Feild, Oliver Platt, and Connie Britton in the biopic on the origin story of the Wonder Woman character, Professor Marston and the Wonder Women (2017), written and directed by Angela Robinson, and grossing $2 million for Annapurna Pictures after premiering at the Toronto film festival.

Rebecca Hall did her first English vocal dub of a Japanese animation feature as part of the English voice cast of writer-director Mamoru Hosoda’s Mirai (2018), the first non-Ghibli movie to earn a Best Animated Film Oscar nomination. Hall co-starred with Elle Fanning and Zlatko Buric in the music-themed movie, Teen Spirit (2018), written and directed by Max Minghella, and earned modest box office for distributors LD Entertainment/Bleeker Street/Lionsgate after premiering at the Toronto film festival.

Hall co-starred with Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly in director/writer Etan Cohen’s comedy take on Sherlock Holmes, Holmes & Watson (2018), with Rob Brydon, Kelly Macdonald, Steve Coogan, and Ralph Fiennes, but underperformed at the box office for Columbia Pictures/Sony Pictures Releasing. Hall reunited with Woody Allen in a supporting role for his widely-panned, long-delayed (due to Allen’s sexual abuse scandals) rom-com, A Rainy Day in New York (2019), with Timothée Chalamet, Elle Fanning, Selena Gomez, Jude Law, Diego Luna, and Liev Schreiber, but which was dropped by Amazon Studios and eventually released by MPI Media Group for poor box office results.

Rebecca Hall was the star and executive producer of Searchlight Pictures’ psychological horror movie, The Night House (2020), directed by David Bruckner and featuring Sarah Goldberg, Evan Jonigkeit, Stacy Martin, and Vondie Curtis-Hall, and grossing $15.5 million globally after premiering at the Sundance film festival. Hall made a triumphant debut as director/writer/producer of the highly acclaimed period drama based on Neila Larson’s 1929 novel, Passing, starring Tessa Thompson, Ruth Negga, André Holland, Bill Camp, Gbenga Akinnagbe, and Alexander Skarsgård, earning Hall nominations from BAFTA, the USC Scripter Awards, and the Gotham Awards, among several others.

Hall co-starred in her first franchise movie, the Legendary Pictures/Warner Bros./Toho “MonsterVerse” $155 million feature, Godzilla vs. Kong (2021), directed by Adam Wingard and co-starring Alexander Skarsgård, Millie Bobby Brown, Brian Tyree Henry, Shun Oguri, Eiza Gonzalez, Lance Reddick, Kyle Chandler, and Demián Bichir, and which was released simultaneously in cinemas and HBO Max, and grossing a strong $470 million globally. Hall played opposite Tim Roth in writer-director Andrew Semans’ strange psychological drama, Resurrection (2022), with Grace Kaufman and Michael Esper, premiering at the Sundance Film Festival.

Rebecca Hall delivered one of her few voice roles in the live-action drama, The Listener (2022), directed and co-produced by Steve Buscemi and written by Alessandro Camon, and starring Tessa Thompson with Logan Marshall-Green, Margaret Cho, Ricky Velez, Alia Shawkat, Jamie Hector, and Derek Cecil, and which premiered as closing night of the Venice film festival’s Giornate Degli Autori, and theatrically released in March 2024. Hall resumed her role as Ilene in the Adam Wingard-directed “MonsterVerse” sequel from Legendary Pictures/Warner Bros./Toho, Godzilla vs. Kong: The New Empire (2024), with Dan Stevens, Brian Tyree Henry, and Kaylee Hottle.

Hall then joined veteran director/writer/producer James L. Brooks for his first comedy feature in thirteen years, Ella McCay (2025), starring Emma Mackey, Jamie Lee Curtis, Woody Harrelson, Ayo Edebiri, Albert Brooks, Kumail Nanjiani, Spike Fearn, and Jack Lowden, and which was released by 20^th Century Studios.