Anthony Michael Hall (Hall Anthony Michael)

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 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 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 started his career in commercials when he was seven years old. He was the Honeycomb cereal kid and appeared in several commercials for toys and Bounty. His stage debut was in 1977, when he was cast as the young Steve Allen in Allen's semi-autobiographical play The Wake. He went on to appear in the Lincoln Center Festival's production of St. Joan of the Microphone, and in a play with Woody Allen. In 1980, he made his screen debut in the Emmy-winning TV movie The Gold Bug, in which he played the young Edgar Allan Poe, but it was not until the release of the 1982 Kenny Rogers film Six Pack that he gained real notice.

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