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Quoting:
"You spineless candy ass corporate fuck." - David Fisher
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Quotes | Michael C. Hall
"I do think I grew up in an environment in which, in subtle ways, enthusiasm was not necessarily encouraged. There is something wonderful about celebrating who you are, especially if it follows a period where you get everything but that."
"[My mother] certainly grew up in an world where homosexuality, I think, was equated with weakness. I don't think she feels that way now. But I remember a time when I was doing a community theater production in Raleigh [N.C.] - and I went to lunch with my mom and a friend who was a doctor, I believe. [Afterward] my mom communicated to me that the doctor sort of warned her, 'The theater is a place where there are a lot of homosexuals.' Thankfully, for whatever reason, when I heard that, I thought, That's fucked-up. [Laughs] But what kind of number would that have done on me if I were gay?"
"I'm kind of a tech-tard. I do have an iPod, a laptop, a Mac. Look at this cell phone. [Takes out a battered old specimen]. I almost have it as a source of pride. It's a stretch. I'm not much of a wizard."
"Undisciplined surfing is my guilty TV pleasure."
"I didn't have enough trepidation about playing a gay funeral director not to play it. I didn't have enough trepidation about playing a serial killer not to take the challenge. If people are inclined to associate me with a character I'm playing, I suppose that's a good thing. It's better than like, 'Well, clearly you're not that guy.'"
On Dexter:
"I think Dexter always felt a kinship with Doakes, who emerged as a really legitimate confidant. Aside from his father, Doakes is the only one Dexter has killed in front of -- that's pretty intimate!"
"I think Dexter in spite of everything is an eminently relatable guy. We all have questions about our authenticity and have secrets that we keep that are potent in terms of our interior landscape. We all have a shadow side, maybe not as formidable on paper as Dexter's."
"I think that's a part of my job, playing the character in spite of his claims of having a closed heart, to open my heart to him. The more I learn about Dexter as he learns about himself the more affection that I have for him, the more respect that I have for him too. We all have our shadow. His is about as formidable a shadow as you can imagine, but he's taking this unique responsibility for it. I admire him for that."
"I have my opinions about whether or not Dexter is human. I think he is. I think a lot of his journey over the course of the second season will be negotiating his growing awareness of that fact with the fact that his compulsion remains and how to reconcile those things."
"I didn't anticipate that I would do another television series after Six Feet Under in part because I didn't anticipate anything would come along that would give me enough confidence to say yes to, that it would be as artistically viable and challenging to me individually as an actor. So I feel really fortunate."
"The people who are afraid of me, I wonder why, if they have a reason for it. People generally just express their enthusiasm about the show, the character. They want to make sure it's coming back. That's always really encouraging. But if there's any nuance beyond that, it's usually that they express a sense of maybe guilt over their affection for the character or that it does create in them a sense of 'Oh boy, I find myself identifying with your character and that makes me feel kind of funny. But I really like him.' And I think that's great. That's what the show aspires to do."
"He's got a little dance in him, but not a lot of sing."
(On the second season) "In a way, Dexter is alienating and hurting people in a way he never has before, and it's in the midst of him entertaining the possibility of his rehabilitation. You watch him and you're almost like, 'I wish he'd just start killing people again!'"
(On the character of Harry) "It really was a simultaneously loving and manipulative act. I probably think more about Dexter's father than Dexter does."
"What attracted me to Dexter was the moral ambiguity. The fact that he wears a grey hat rather than a white or black one. Also, the challenge of breathing life into someone who claims to be without the capacity for authentic human emotion is fun."
"The voiceover element means you're on the ride with him. And the fact that we meet him in the first episode in the midst of killing a demonstrably reprehensible person immediately puts you on his side and also implicates you."
"Looking back, I guess it was kind of nuts to go straight into something else after Six Feet Under, but I recognized that Dexter would give me a chance to do something really different in a significant way. I couldn't pass it up."
"I've done a bit of research (on serial killers), and I certainly haven't come across a character who is quite in sync with what Dexter seems to be or is emerging to be. It's a lot to wrap your imagination around as an actor."
"He has a compulsion that he cannot quite deny, but I think he's admirable in that he has made lemonade from a pretty substantial lemon. Everyone has skeletons in their closet but his closet is definitely a walk-in one..."
"He's a bit of a chameleon so [with this character] I never have to try and convince myself that I am not acting."
"So what is so great, so funny about Dexter is that when he is setting himself apart from others and talking about why he is not human, that's when he is most accessible."
"There was a line in the pilot: 'People fake a lot of human interactions but I fake them all.' You could argue that we all fake our interactions, or at least tailor them to the situation. The person I am now in this interview is not the person I am when I am home, or when I am on the phone to my mother or when I am ordering a cheeseburger. We all ebb and flow and change and wear different masks… and kill people at night. No, we don't..."
"I think the way Dexter conducts himself with Deb has something to do with his father Harry's code. Dexter recognises that Deb was left out of her father's life because of the interest that Harry took in Dexter. So as a way to honour his father's memory he is a father to Deb, in a way. It's interesting that the more he helps her move forward in her work, the better equipped she will be to get to the truth about him. So it's the closest relationship but also the most dangerous."
"And I don't think we imagine that the audience will perpetually be on Dexter's side. We aspire to a moral ambiguity, and I think there will be times when people are torn, but hopefully the audience are in a way implicated because they are the only ones that are hearing the full truth - or at least Dexter's take on the truth - and are in his head along with him."
(Comparing Dexter and Six Feet Under's David) "Dexter's more on the supply side. [Laughs] Rim shot! But he is. He's so much more proactive. David really, in his way, wore his heart on his sleeve. And Dexter is convinced he doesn't even have one. They intersect in some ways, and in others they're very different."
(On working with Erik King [Doakes]) "The head butt. [Laughs] We have so much fun, Erik [King] and I, in playing those scenes. It's just so fun to go to that total animal, instinctual, male place."
"I think Dexter is a man who…a part of himself is very much frozen, or arrested in a place that is pre-memory, pre-conscious, pre-verbal. Something very traumatic happened to him, he doesn't know what that is. And I think on some level he wants to know. He denies his humanity, he describes himself as someone who is without feeling, and yet I think that he maybe suspects — in a way that maybe isn't even conscious yet when we first meet him — that he is in fact a human being."
"Dexter's a unique killer in that his father saw his dark impulses, shined a light on them, and told Dexter that he saw them, he accepted them, that Dexter is good and that he is worthy of love. And I think that's what enables him to focus his energies in this unique way."
On Six Feet Under:
"I'm definitely not as fastidious as David. Yeah, sloppy. Ultimately, I'm a mess. I don't mean I'm a mess, like, emotionally - I mean, I think probably everybody's a mess. David's a mess. But. I'm talking about ... I'm messy. [Chuckles] Honestly, no. But that's an irony that nobody's ever touched on before. In a strange way, playing David during the first season required me to get in touch with my homophobia. He had such internalized loathing for who he was. I certainly have moved forward in my life, in my own relationship to my self-loathing, by having played David."
"I don't think closeted homosexual morticians have the market cornered on self-loathing or sense of shame."
"I think David comes to discover that he's been his own worst enemy, and it's really his own internalized disapproval and disgust, his own internalized homophobia, that must be reckoned with. It's not about changing the rest of the world, it's about changing himself."
"Sometimes people's eyes widen when they find out in one way or another that I'm not gay. All of a sudden, their praise for my performance gets ratcheted up. As if Peter Krause isn't acting because he's playing a character who's straight. It's ridiculous."
"When we meet them, Keith is this rock, supersupportive and understanding, and David is in the midst of his trauma. And they shift. David becomes a caretaker in his own way, especially when Keith is dealing with his family, his father, and all that. I love how imperfect [their relationship] is. It's what makes it so great to play and so rich."
"One woman put her hand on my arm after having approached me, and she said, 'Are you on Six Feet Under?' She didn't address me as David, but at the end of our conversation she touched me on the arm and looked into my eyes and said, 'You're gonna be OK.'"
On Cabaret:
"Everything I opened up for Cabaret, I slammed shut for David."
"Here's a guy who's a pansexual party boy and throws a party every night that ends badly [chuckles]. I feel like I really grew so much as an actor."
(On being hired by Sam Mendes) "I got a call at noon to come in for a 6 o'clock work session, so I knew that it was serious. I went in at 6 and I had the job at 7, and I sat and watched the production at 8 for the first time. Talk about being thrust into the mix you've imagined. Like, Oh, my God, what the hell am I gonna do now? And l knew that in three weeks I'd be throwing that party myself. It was like being shot out of a cannon that first night. Stepping on the stage that first, show and behaving as if 'Yeah, this is my club' - I drank bottles and bottles of Pepto-Bismol from the refrigerator in my dressing room. But it passed. I really had a blast."
Others on Michael
Julie Benz:
"Oh wow, he's probably the most intelligent actor I've ever worked with. I mean intelligent as far as character and script and just how he approaches the whole process and how he has such an amazing understanding of Dexter. Not just of his character, but of the whole show. At first it was very intimidating. I don't think I've ever worked with somebody who just is so prepared for the whole process. I just felt, the minute I auditioned with him, was safety. I felt very safe with him.
Julie Benz:
"The reason we had such great chemistry is because I feel so safe with him as far as no matter what we have to do as actors, no matter what is asked of us emotionally, we're there for each other. You know we're going to each support each other. It's hard to find somebody who's that generous. Who's going to go along with you rather than be threatened by you and who will support you… I am just in awe of him."
Julie Benz:
"I watch the show [Dexter]. I'm a huge fan of the show as well because I'm a huge fan of his performance. What's captured on film is just… I don't think anybody else could have played this part."
Julie Benz:
"Michael's very serious and very intense on set. My process is completely different."
Julie Benz:
"I was a huge fan of Six Feet Under. I mean, my cell phone ring was the theme song. I still pinch myself that I have the opportunity to work with him on a daily basis. He's my partner in crime on the show."
Alan Ball:
"We did four days of casting in New York, and I heard about Michael C. Hall right before he walked in the door. Then he started reading, and I just saw the character come to life. And it was David."
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MCH On TV
Dexter (2006 - ) 
Gamer (2009) 
Peep World (2009) 
