Michael Anthony Hall (born April 14, 1968), known professionally as Anthony Michael Hall, is an American actor, producer and director who starred in several teen-oriented films of the 1980s. Hall began his career in commercials and on stage as a child, and made his screen debut in 1980. His films with director-screenwriter John Hughes, beginning with the popular 1984 coming-of-age comedy Sixteen Candles, shaped his early career. Hall's next movies with Hughes were the teen classics The Breakfast Club and Weird Science, both in 1985. His performances as lovable geeks in these three films connected his name and face with the stereotype for an entire generation.
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Source: Wikipedia

Michael Anthony Hall (born April 14, 1968), known professionally as Anthony Michael Hall, is an American actor, producer and director who starred in several teen-oriented films of the 1980s. Hall began his career in commercials and on stage as a child, and made his screen debut in 1980. His films with director-screenwriter John Hughes, beginning with the popular 1984 coming-of-age comedy Sixteen Candles, shaped his early career. Hall's next movies with Hughes were the teen classics The Breakfast Club and Weird Science, both in 1985. His performances as lovable geeks in these three films connected his name and face with the stereotype for an entire generation.
Hall diversified his roles to avoid becoming typecast as his geek persona, joining the cast of Saturday Night Live (1985-1986) and starring in films such as Out of Bounds (1986), Johnny Be Good (1988), Edward Scissorhands (1990) and Six Degrees of Separation (1993). After a series of minor roles in the 1990s, his performance as Microsoft's Bill Gates in the 1999 film Pirates of Silicon Valley put him back in the spotlight. He had the starring role in the USA Network series The Dead Zone, from 2002 to 2007. During its run, the show was one of the highest-rated cable television series.

Personal
Anthony Michael Hall was born in West Roxbury, a neighborhood in Boston, Massachusetts. He is the only child of blues-jazz singer Mercedes Hall's first marriage. She divorced Hall's father, Larry, an auto-body-shop owner, when their son was six months old. When Hall was three, he and his mother relocated to the West Coast where she found work as a featured singer. After a year and a half, they returned to the East, eventually moving to New York City, where Hall grew up. Hall's ancestry is Irish and Italian, and he is a Roman Catholic. He has one half-sister, Mary Chestaro, from his mother's second marriage to Thomas Chestaro, a show business manager. His half-sister is pursuing a career as a singer under the name of Mary C. Hall uses the name Michael, rather than Anthony or Anthony Michael. He transposed his first and middle names when he entered show business because another actor named Michael Hall was already a member of the Screen Actors Guild.
Hall attended St. Hilda's & St. Hugh's School of New York before moving on to Manhattan's Professional Children's School. Hall began his acting career at age eight and continued throughout high school. "I did not go to college," he has said, "but I'm an avid reader in the ongoing process of educating myself." Through the 1980s, Hall's mother managed his career, eventually relinquishing that role to her second husband.
Hall is committed to aiding at-risk youth through his literacy program, The Anthony Michael Hall Literacy Club, in association with Chapman University. The club provides an opportunity for the students to improve their literacy skills by exploring genres not typically used to enhance literacy, such as films, music and lyrics, scripts, and novels with audio. Following family tradition, Hall is pursuing his other passion, music. He is the lead singer and songwriter for his band, Hall of Mirrors, formed in 1998. The band released an album, Welcome to the Hall of Mirrors, through Hall's own RAM Records label in 1999, with collaborations from former Guns N' Roses guitarist Gilby Clarke and Prince's former keyboard player Tommy Barbarella.
Hall briefly dated actress Molly Ringwald after they co-starred in The Breakfast Club. He has also dated Canadian model Sandra Guerard. When not filming The Dead Zone in Montreal, Quebec, he resides in Los Angeles, California.
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