Rebecca Hall - Biography

Name: Rebecca Hall

Born: 19 May 1982 (Age: 27)

Where: London, England

Height: 5' 9"

Awards: Nominated for 1 BAFTA and 1 Golden Globe

It's hard to escape the shadow of a famous parent, tough to take accusations of privilege and nepotism on top of the usual criticisms aimed at actors. For Rebecca Hall, then, the child of a celebrity couple, it's been doubly difficult. Her father, Sir Peter Hall, was the founder of the Royal Shakespeare Company and artistic director of the National Theatre, the Royal Opera House and Glyndebourne, while her mother, Maria Ewing, was an opera star of immense renown. They were a controversial couple, too, often appearing in the tabloids despite their lofty positions in high culture. Any kid might be intimidated by their achievements and steer well clear of a career on stage, yet Rebecca accepted the challenge wholeheartedly and, within just five years of her stage debut, would be feted as an actress in theatre, on TV and on film, even being nominated for a Golden Globe. Of all the up and coming British thespians, she was undoubtedly the brightest prospect.

Rebecca Hall was born in London on the 19th of May, 1982. As said, she hailed from golden stock. Her father, Peter Hall, was from Bury St Edmunds, his father Reginald a stationmaster on the railways and his mother, Grace Pamment, the daughter of a butcher. A precocious talent, Peter was the enfant terrible of British theatre in the 1950s, putting on, amongst other notorious productions, the English language premiere of Beckett's Waiting For Godot. Moving to Stratford and the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, he directed Cymbeline with Peggy Ashcroft, Coriolanus with Laurence Olivier and A Midsummer Night's Dream with Charles Laughton before, in 1960 and at the age of just 29, forming the Royal Shakespeare Company, the troupe including such luminaries as Ashcroft, Peter O'Toole, Vanessa Redgrave, David Warner and Ian Holm. There'd be many an outcry as he forcibly injected new life into the Bard's work, even daring to hack it up for his infamous War of the Roses cycle. Hall would remain as the RSC's artistic director till 1968 when he'd move on to the Royal Opera House then, for 14 years, the Royal National Theatre, where he'd give premieres to many of the plays of Harold Pinter. He'd then return to opera, directing the Glyndebourne Festival, before forming his own Peter Hall Company and taking on the Rose Theatre in Kingston.

Being the prime mover in British theatre over the last half century, Hall was immensely charismatic and constantly in the public eye, an inspired workaholic who'd suffer stress-related breakdowns from his twenties.

In 1956 he'd marry the French actress Leslie Caron, an international star after Lili and An American In Paris, and soon to enjoy more success with Gigi. They'd have two children, Christopher and Jennifer, but divorce in 1965, Caron apparently having had an affair with Warren Beatty. Hall would have two more children, Edward and Lucy, with his next wife, his personal assistant Jacqueline Taylor, a union that would last till 1981. Very soon he'd marry Maria Ewing, with Rebecca being born in the same year.

. Born in Detroit in 1950, Ewing was 20 years Hall's junior. A woman of extremely exotic heritage, she had a Dutch mother and a ragtime pianist father of Scottish, Sioux and African American ancestry. As a soprano and mezzo-soprano, she was an extraordinary talent, making her major debut in a filmed version of The Marriage Of Figaro, playing the young girl Cherubino, clad as a boy and undressed by the housekeeper while countess Kiri Te Kanawa struggles to sneak a peek. Ewing would reprise the role at New York's Metropolitan Opera the next year, 1976, and take her European bow at La Scala. Famed for her wild and expressive performances, she'd specialise in Carmen and Lady Macbeth Of Mtsensk, and score a huge hit in 1986 with Richard Strauss's adaptation of Oscar Wilde's Salome. Directed by her husband, this infamous production would see her stamp and gyrate her way through a barnstorming Dance of the Seven Veils ending with her totally naked onstage. To add further outrage, she'd kiss the severed head of John the Baptist and be hacked to death by guards. Ewing would also be noted for her albums of concert music - Ravel, Debussy, Berlioz - and, later, her move into sultry, dramatic jazz.

Due to her parents' work, young Rebecca would spend much of her early life on the road, or at Petworth, a village in west Sussex on the South Downs, close to Fittleworth, the country residence of Dame Maggie Smith. Petworth would be ideal as it was close to Glyndebourne, where her mother would often star and her father, who'd put on productions there since 1970, would become musical director in 1984. Thus young Rebecca would be in the wings when her mother and father staged The Coronation Of Poppea in 1984, and Carmen in 1985, both at Glyndebourne, mum taking the lead each time. She'd be there during the Salome controversy of 1986, in London and across America to the LA Opera House. That same year there'd be visits to New York where her dad would direct Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy in The Petition on Broadway and, from December, Ian McKellen, Kate Burton and Kim Cattrall in Wild Honey, produced in association with the National Theatre. Rebecca would return to New York in 1987 when her mother starred in Dialogues Of the Carmelites at the Metropolitan Opera House, a production dominated by a giant luminous cross, with Ewing starring as Blanche, a fearful aristocrat seeking salvation in a convent but finding only martyrdom during the French Revolution.

Soon, the pressure of work, of travel, of media interest would take its toll on the marriage of Peter Hall and Maria Ewing. They'd split when Rebecca was just five and divorce three years later, in 1990 (Hall would then marry Nicola Frei, in 1992 giving Rebecca another half-sister, Emma). During this time, Rebecca would flit between her mum's place in Sussex and dad's in south London, as well as continuing to travel the world as her mother's career continued to gather force. There'd be another trip across America with Salome then, in 1989, with news of the upcoming divorce in all the papers, Ewing would headline a massive staging of Carmen at Earl's Court, then take the show to Tokyo, where she and Rebecca would take the presidential suite of the Keio Plaza, 80 floors up. Ewing, the consummate diva, would sweep around in a huge black cape and shades, singing to crowds of 40,000 each night. For ages the press were everywhere, digging for dirt, camping outside the house, giving Rebecca an early mouthful of stardom's occasionally bitter taste. Back in London and New York, her father was stirring it up, too. Having formed his Peter Hall Company, he'd have Vanessa Redgrave take a younger lover in Orpheus Descending, then direct Dustin Hoffman as a sensational Shylock in the Merchant Of Venice, first at the National Theatre, then the 46th Street Theatre on Broadway. He'd return to Broadway in 1992 , with Stockard Channing in Four Baboons Adoring The Sun, and again in 1996 with Dulcie Gray, Martin Shaw and Michael Denison in An Ideal Husband. Meanwhile, 1991 would see mum with Placido Domingo in a lusty production of Tosca at the Royal Opera House, then Los Angeles (she'd also performed Tosca two years earlier), as well as a production of Puccini's Madame Butterfly that would see her rent a house above Sunset Strip for $36,000 a month. 1992 would bring more Salome, then Shostakovich's Lady Macbeth Of The Mtsensk at the Opera de Paris, to which Ewing would return in 1994 for Gluck's Alceste. That year would also see Ewing take her Lady Macbeth to the Met in New York. In 1995 there'd be Dido & Aeneas at Hampton Court, in 1997 Fedora, again with Placido Domingo, at the Los Angeles Opera House.

. With Peter Hall such an important figure in theatre and Maria Ewing bringing sex, humour and super-drama to opera, it was unsurprising that as a young girl Rebecca might dream of following them into the performing arts. Having spent time in many of the world's most impressive theatrical arenas, having at the very highest level witnessed the work, the buzz, the adulation, the mistakes, the rages, the sense of creative success, she had a very clear picture of the way forward.

In fact, by this time Rebecca had already become something of a TV star. Back in 1992 her father had agreed to film a four-hour adaptation of Mary Wesley's novel The Camomile Lawn.

He'd cast noted thespians like Claire Bloom, Felicity Kendal and Paul Eddington, as well as pneumatic newcomers Tara Fitzgerald and Jennifer Ehle, but could not find a youngster to play the key role of Sophy, the young niece of Eddington, who exists on the edge of a well-heeled world of ambition, love, betrayal and downright kinkiness as WW2 throws everyone's life into disarray. Hall had auditioned some 500 girls for the part and, with shooting only a week away, was in despair. Then young Rebecca wandered into the production office after school and caught the eye of the producer. The casting director would ask Hall if, given the time constraint, he would mind if they auditioned his daughter. He said OK, but count me out. Rebecca would pass the test and, despite her father's misgivings, would be given the role. Thus, as Sophy, she'd be present for many of the naughty and painful shenanigans, eavesdropping on attempted seductions from a tree outside a Cornish villa, racing across the treacherous cliffs, being abused and extracting terrible revenge, then visiting London as the bombs fell and the fear of death pushed the characters into evermore extraordinary situations. And she was excellent throughout, very seldom misjudging her lines and bringing a very real emotion of her own. With her wonky teeth and natural ebullience she was far from being a precocious TV brat.

. As you'd expect from a Peter Hall production, particularly one featuring high levels of adultery and a threesome including twins, the series claimed a great deal of media attention. At the tender age of 10, Rebecca would score an agent and continue her TV career with Don't Leave Me This Way. Based on the novel by Joan Smith, this was the follow-up to 1992's A Masculine Ending, where Janet McTeer had played academic pseudo-sleuth Loretta Lawson. Here McTeer and her buddy Imelda Staunton would meet old friend Pamela Salem at a book launch, put her up for a few days and, when she's killed in a car crash, attempt to console her grieving husband, her emotionally disturbed son, and her young daughter, played by Hall, soon coming to suspect that the death was not the accident it seemed. Also featuring would be Bill Nighy, and Hall would find herself in illustrious company once more with her next production, The Tale Of Mirs Tiggy-Winkle And Mr Jeremy Fisher, where she'd lend her voice to a little girl named Lucie, living on a farm and forever losing her handkerchief, who gets involved with the washerwoman hedgehog and blarneying frog of the title, played by Prunella Scales and Derek Jacobi.

Though her career had begun promisingly, Hall's drive to the top would now be delayed as her parents decided she'd be better off concentrating on her education and leading a normal life - well, as normal as it could be amidst her parents' endless rehearsals and high-profile performances.

To keep her feet on the ground, they'd send her to Roedean (she'd actually win an arts scholarship and would for a long time dream of going to art college), not far from Petworth, standing on the Sussex Downs, overlooking the English Channel near Brighton. Based on its 40-acre site since 1898, it was one of the most expensive schools in the UK, featuring a science wing and centres for languages and the humanities, as well as art studios, design and technology workshops, a heated pool, squash courts, hockey and cricket pitches, twelve hard courts for tennis and netball, plus facilities for music, dance and horse-riding. Perhaps more importantly for Hall, it was also well-equipped for drama (Sarah Miles was a former pupil), boasting a 320-seat theatre with green room, a theatre workshop and a large collection of costumes, scenery and props. Already schooled in the business of theatre, Hall would spend much of her time and energy on drama, involving herself in every play she could though, given her height, she'd always be asked to play male roles, including the crippled Sheridan Whiteside in The Man Who Came To Dinner. Come the Sixth Form, she'd be heavily involved in the school's Team Play Festival, where groups of pupils would be required to devise, direct and perform a 20-minute drama. She'd be encouraged in her endeavours by her father who, around the age of 16, had begun to take her seriously as a potential thespian. This was important as he was still a major player in the world of theatre - he was just about to score another smash on Broadway with a new version of Amadeus that saw Michael Sheen as Mozart to David Suchet's Salieri - and his opinion carried great weight with Rebecca.

. Hall would do well at Roedean, passing three A-Levels and one A/S Level with straight A's. She'd also be elected Head Girl. This was a joke, she'd later claim. She'd been an awful Head Girl, cocky, chaotic and stupid, and had only been voted in because the other girls thought it would be funny. By way of proof, she'd add that, after her election, pupils would never again be permitted to vote for their own student leader. Her smooth progression would continue with a move, in 2000, to St Catharine's College, Cambridge, a university her father had attended before her, as had his recent star turn Ian McKellen. This was an extremely prestigious establishment, with a proud history and the highest academic standards. Come 2005 it would be top of the Tompkins Table, a measure of the best-performing undergraduates in the country.

Though ostensibly studying English Literature, Hall would spend much of her university life involved in drama, forming a theatre group, directing performances and acting in a dozen or so plays. She'd be Hermia in A Midsummer Night's Dream, Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing, Miranda in The Tempest (the last two running at Cambridge's ADC Theatre in January, 2001), delving deep into the canon that had been her father's life.

In October of 2001 she'd play the vicious, seductive Martha in Edward Albee's Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf at the ADC, again winning praise from her father, who was beginning to take her very seriously indeed. Having joined the Marlowe Dramatic Society (earlier members including her father, Trevor Nunn, Ian McKellen, Sam Mendes and her former co-star Derek Jacobi), in February and March of 2002 she'd play both Lady Macbeth and the witch queen Hecate in Macbeth at the Cambridge Arts Theatre. With Dan Stevens as her Macbeth, the play would be performed on a multi-level scaffold, the actors wearing costumes both mediaeval and futuristic, Hall glowing in a shiny gold dress. As Lady Macbeth she'd be a young, determined woman, out to make the most of life, murder being just a game to her; as Hecate she'd be furious with the other witches for beginning to toy with Macbeth before she's given the order. One review would claim that she "filled the auditorium with her presence before even opening her mouth, and gave us the perfect blend of poise, despotism and delusion".

. So far, so good, but Hall was dissatisfied nonetheless. To some extent she felt trapped by her ongoing education and wanted to break clear of the well-trodden path that had led from Roedean to Cambridge. She also had little interest in scoring her degree. Acting was her choice of future and she wanted to get down to it as soon as she could. Consequently, much to her father's disappointment, she'd drop out of Cambridge after her second year, get an agent and begin to actively pursue work. It didn't go well. With little experience, no time spent in provincial rep, and no drama school education, she got no offers. Indeed, after three months she began to believe she was suffering from anti-nepotism, that people weren't hiring her because of who her father was. Severely miffed by this thwarting of her ambitions, she decided to go the whole nepotistic hog and accept her father's invitation to appear in his new production of Shaw's Mrs Warren's Profession at London's Strand Theatre. It was a mighty risk. If she was thought to have been cast for her blood-ties to the director and then bombed out, she'd set her career back by decades. On the other hand, she impatiently reasoned, she might find herself "resting" forever if no one would hire Sir Peter Hall's daughter. The risk simply had to be taken.

So, between October of 2002 and January, 2003, Hall would join Brenda Blethyn onstage at the Strand, Blethyn playing the titular Mrs Warren and Hall her headstrong young daughter Vivie. An attack on the hypocrisy of the English establishment, the play would see Blethyn as the madame of several European brothels, whose wealth and investment opportunities see her accepted by the great and good of the worlds of politics and religion, men who'd drop her like a stone if her secret ever became public knowledge.

She's worked hard to allow her daughter to escape a life of drudgery, and indeed Vivie is a Cambridge graduate with ambitions to become an actuary. Unfortunately for her mother, she's also a proto-feminist, wanting to support herself and with no interest in romance, marriage or motherhood, rejecting not only the rich suitors who press themselves upon her, but also her mother for playing by the (male) establishment's rules. Where Blethyn would be vulgar and manipulative but kind, Hall was spirited and larky but also austere, hard and unforgiving in her outlook. Her risk paid off, the production was lauded, and she even won the National Theatre's Ian Charleson Award for the best actor under the age of 30 in the UK, the jury being made up of experienced thesps and chaired by Eileen Atkins.

. Hall's next effort would see her take to the radio for a production of F Scott Fitzgerald's Tender Is The Night, where she'd play young actress Rosemary Hoyt, staying on the Riviera with her mother and being drawn into the scandalous circle of stylish American couple Dick and Nicole Diver. Wide-eyed and innocent, Hall would fall for Michael Maloney's Dick, formerly his wife's doctor, but can only look on helplessly as the balance of power shifts within the marriage, Nicole now rising and Dick disintegrating.

With the Ian Charleson Award having proved beyond doubt that she was a serious prospect, Hall would now confidently reunite with her father, joining the Peter Hall Company for its summer season at the Theatre Royal in Bath. Twiggy would star in Mrs Warren's Profession, Janie Dee in Pinter's Betrayal and Coward's Design for Living, Elaine Paige and David Warner would appear in Where There's A Will and Felicity Kendal in Beckett's Happy Days. From the 30th of June till the 6th of August, 2003, Rebecca would appear in DH Lawrence's The Fight For Barbara, directed by Thea Sharrock, a play based on Lawrence's relationship with the married Frieda Weekley. Here Hall would play the upper-class Barbara who's left her marriage and shacked up in a villa with collier's son Jimmy (Jason Hughes). When her parents arrive to save her from this shame, she turns on them, condemning the pointless marriage she's abandoned, railing against the drabness of her former life and, though she loves him, even attacking Jimmy for his emotional reserve. Hall would be excellent in the part, demanding, hysterical and unpredictable, sometimes vicious, but always very human, giving real life to a character many have called the feminist forerunner to Jimmy Porter in Look Back In Anger.

The major production of the PHC season, though, would be a new take on As You Like It. The lead role of Rosalind was a real tester for actresses as it was pivotal to the play, quite rare in Shakespeare, and the longest female role what he wrote. Having produced Vanessa Redgrave in the classic RSC version back in 1961, Peter Hall had not gone near the play since, convinced that it could not be bettered.

Janet Suzman and Juliet Stevenson had be great, but had not matched Redgrave's sublime efforts. Now, convinced of his daughter's abilities, he decided to revisit As You Like It and offered her that pressurised lead. Rebecca hesitated, knowing she had the required youthfulness but unsure if she could summon Rosalind's emotional weightiness. Eventually, she agreed. So, as the daughter of a deposed duke, now banished from court herself, she'd flee to the Forest of Arden where her beloved Orlando (Joseph Millson), the rightful heir to the throne, is hiding out. Here, disguising herself as the boy Ganymede, she tests Orlando's love for her and, in finding love matches between her friends and enemies, heals the kingdom. Complex and subtle, but also the most generous and big-hearted of Shakespeare's mature comedies, the play was a hit with the public again. In September the production would move on to Stoke, Nottingham and Bromley, then cross the pond to Columbus, Ohio, New Haven and Boston, playing in the States from November 2nd till just before Christmas. Though Rebecca was criticized by one reviewer for allowing too much of a contemporary drawl into her speech at times, her performance as the fast-talking, cross-dressing Rosalind was in general feted to the rafters, her vigour, romanticism, and perfect youthful gawkiness all being noted. Indeed she was said to be up there with the most exciting Rosalinds ever.

Hall was now living in Highbury with flatmate David Birkin, nephew of Jane, and dating songwriter and actor Freddie Stevenson. Stevenson, a real showman with an afro cut, was a Scottish musician who'd been educated at Harrow and RADA. The son of artist and potter Charles Stevenson and Jocelyn Stevenson, co-creator of Fraggle Rock (Freddie's godfather is Jim Henson), he'd appeared in the acclaimed TV drama State Of Play and onstage with Rebecca in As You Like It, playing both the wicked, fascistic Oliver and the minstrel Amiens. While in his relationship with Hall, he'd also record an EP and his debut album, Body On The Line.

Rebecca would fail to score an audition for the two movies Woody Allen was now casting in London, Match Point and Scoop. She was, though, keen to enter the world of cinema and would regularly make audition tapes in her flat and send them to casting directors, a habit she'd continue when she moved to Archway. For work, and for further experience, she'd stick with her father, taking a tiny room in a house shared with three other actors from the cast and returning to Bath for the PHC's 2004 summer season, where Nicholas Lyndhurst and Julian Glover would appear in The Dresser and Penelope Keith and Joanna Riding in Noel Coward's Blithe Spirit. This time, Rebecca would take on three plays, each challengingly running side by side. Directed again by Thea Sharrock, she'd be Elvira in Simon Nye's recent translation of Moliere's Don Juan.

Set in a Mediterranean fishing village in Victorian times, this would see Will Keen as the titular conqueror of women, a heel of epic proportion, with Rebecca escaping from a convent to scream abuse at him, then returning to beg him to mend his ways. She'd stay religious for Galileo's Daughter, set in Florence, as she played the daughter of the legendary scientist, a pious, graceful and well-scrubbed nun who supports her father (Glover) in his intellectual battles with the church. Sharing his scientific fervour, she rejects him when he's forced to recant his blasphemous statements, then learns to accept his failings and compromises.

. Most challenging of her three plays would be Man And Superman, a return to George Bernard Shaw. Uncut, the play would run to some five hours, but Peter Hall slashed it down to three-and-a-half. Set in an Edwardian study, the Sierra Nevada, an elegant Granada and, in the famous third act, a ghostly underworld, this would see Rebecca as Anne Whitefield, pursuing the progressive (and reluctant) Jack Tanner through time and space. Basing his play loosely on the Don Juan legend, Shaw would use dreamscapes, comedy and philosophy to explore the notion that women are the life force of every culture, as well as predators, and the proto-feminist Whitefield would be remorseless in her hunt, even, in that third dream-act, visiting Hell, she and Tanner, now become Dona Ana and Don Juan, conversing with the Devil himself.

Rebecca would remain with her father for his next project, when he took the PHC to the Rose Theatre in Kingston. He'd launch this new venture with a sure-fire hit, a reprise of his 2003 production of As You Like It, with Rebecca back as Rosalind and Dan Stevens, her university co-star, stepping in as Orlando. To great acclaim, they'd play at the Rose from November 30th, 2004, till the 18th of December, then the next year take the production to Brooklyn's Academy of Music, San Francisco's Curran theatre, and the Ahmanson Theatre in Los Angeles. Stevens would be nominated for an Ian Charleson Award for his efforts, as would Rebecca, for the second time.

Rebecca's stage success now saw her being offered parts in films and on TV and, still keen to move into cinema, she leapt at the opportunities. Her cinematic debut would be made in the Brit flick Starter For Ten, set in 1985, where James McAvoy would play a working-class lad from Southend who makes it to Bristol University and onto the college's team for the TV quiz show University Challenge. The film would examine his problems settling into this new life as he alienates his friends from home and, by disapproving of her new boyfriend, his own mother, played by Catherine Tate.

In the meantime he also suffers romantic problems, falling for posh blonde Alice Eve, a flighty type engaging in careless experimentation, and enduring an on-off relationship with Hall, a post-punk indie kid who hides her vulnerability behind a mask of smart cynicism and demonstrates against injustice on a daily basis. As the big TV appearance approaches and his difficulties come to a head, he must learn to let his past go and embrace his new future. It was a fairly shallow comedy enlivened by excellent performances by McAvoy, Hall and Benedict Cumberbatch, the finest sequence coming when McAvoy and Hall, both lonely on New Year's Eve, come together over a bottle of hooch. They're nervous, tentative, drunkenly awkward, and utterly charming. Starter For Ten would not be a major success but, importantly, it would introduce Hall to one of the executive producers, Sam Mendes.

. Hall's next release would be far classier affair. This was Wide Sargasso Sea, a BBC adaptation of Jean Rhys's novel, a prequel to Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre. This would see Rafe Spall as the young Edward Rochester, seeking his fortune in Jamaica in the 1830s. Here he falls for Hall's Creole woman Antoinette Cosway, and discovers a new lusty happiness with her, moving into a honeymoon home. However, soon Rochester is warned of madness in his new bride's family and grows cold, Hall reacting badly to his distant, controlling ways, and mentally disintegrating as she's crushed by her husband's indifference and a patriarchal and racist society that's out to destroy her. It was a brilliant performance from Hall, sensual, fraught and drawing on every ounce of exoticism she'd inherited from Maria Ewing.

Hall's next picture would be better yet. This was Christopher Nolan's The Prestige, set in the early 1900s, where Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman would play two stage magicians in increasingly violent conflict, Jackman believing Bale to be responsible for the death of his wife and both relentlessly seeking to sabotage the other's act. Hall would play a sweet young woman who falls for and marries Bale after taking her nephew to see him perform in a shabby club. They have a daughter and find brief happiness, but Hall's evermore upset by Bale's seemingly schizoid behaviour. She wants honesty from him, no secrets, the one thing he cannot give. And so, driven to drink by his unpredictable coldness and an apparent affair with assistant Scarlett Johansson, she becomes angry, resentful and eventually suicidal. Though Johansson would receive headline billing alongside Bale, Jackman and Michael Caine, it was Hall who lent the movie emotional weight, the suffering inflicted upon her revealing the depths Bale was prepared to plumb in his pursuit of artistic excellence.

2007 would see just two Hall releases. First was the unusual 15-minute short Rubberheart, written and directed by Brian Crano.

Based on a story by Hall herself and featuring music by her boyfriend Freddie Stevenson, this would see Hall visiting a video store looking to pick up a guy. In the Tinto Brass section she meets and chats up Josh Cooke, revealing a deep knowledge of pervy movies, and takes him back to her pad for a viewing of Salon Kitty and a spot of steamy rumpo. Eventually, she winds up at his place, and is introduced to his wide and wild range of sex toys. It was funny, odd and very humane, with Hall again impressive in her loneliness and wavering indecision. Oddly, she be far less challenged by her next project, the BBC's Joe's Palace, written and directed by the renowned Stephen Poliakoff. Here Michael Gambon would pay an eccentric millionaire who lives across the street from his own palatial mansion, racked by fears that his family's wealth sprang from his father's connections to the Nazis. Looking after the pile is Danny Lee Wynter, son of one of the cleaning ladies, and he allows MP Richard Reece to use it for a base for his affair with Kelly Reilly. Hall, meanwhile, plays a girl from the local deli, helping Gambon's discover the truth about his father's past, a truth that, oddly, has eluded several professional historians. It was a prestigious production, but unconvincing.

. 2008 would see her breakthrough. Having failed to score an audition for Match Point and Scoop, Hall had managed to win one of the leads in Woody Allen's Vicky Cristina Barcelona, placing her on a bill with Penelope Cruz, Javier Bardem and, again, Scarlett Johansson. Here Hall would play a Gaudi-loving American student of Catalan cultural identity who, along with friend Johansson, visits Barcelona, staying with relative Patricia Clarkson. Taken to an exhibition, the two girls are later propositioned by the artist, Bardem, who invites them on a trip to a small country town where they can see the sights and have sex with him. Hall, about to be married, is outraged, but the flirty Johansson is keen, and so off they go, only for Johansson to fall sick with food poisoning, leaving Bardem to move in on Hall. Inflamed by the atmosphere, the wine and the flamenco guitar, she succumbs to his advances in the grass, her sexual yearning briefly overcoming her moral indignation, and then is wracked by both guilt and jealousy as Bardem moves on to a menage a trois with Johansson and his brilliant but tormented ex Cruz. As the straight-laced Vicky, Hall was quite brilliant, at first suspicious and sarcastic, then blossoming as Bardem appeals to her intellect, her deeper feelings raised to the surface by the romance and culture. Still, though, she battles to repress those feelings, particularly in her dealings with her materialistic fiance and, despite Clarkson's desperate warnings, gradually recognises that she's too timid to accept the painful chaos that comes with passion. Cruz would win an Oscar for her more showy efforts but Hall would be recognised, too, winning a Golden Globe nomination.

It was well deserved as much of the film's drama and comedy had played out across her face.

. Hall's next release of an extraordinary year would be another short with Brian Crano, called Official Selection. A satire on the making of short films, it would switch between the 1800s and the present, with Hall playing poetess Emily Dickinson, crazed by religious visions and imagining affairs with Rimbaud and Verlaine, played by Freddie Stevenson and Josh Cooke respectively. Her final two showings of 2008 would see her take smaller roles in bigger productions. First there'd be the much-lauded Frost/Nixon where Michael Sheen (who'd earlier played Mozart so memorably for her father) would be arch inquisitor David Frost, organising and carrying out his famous series of interviews with Frank Langella's ex-president Richard Nixon in 1977. Hall would play the glamorous and free-spirited Caroline Cushing, the former wife of a rich socialite, who Frost meets on the plane to California and invites along to the interviews. She'd support him when Nixon deflected his questions and looked likely to wreck a project in which Frost had staked everything, and he'd later use her to wind up Nixon, who was unduly interested in Frost's reputation as a ladykiller. Well directed by Ron Howard, the movie would rack up five Oscar nominations and, though Hall's role was inessential she still gained much kudos from her involvement. Much the same could be said of her part in the BAFTA-nominated Einstein And Eddington which saw her return to the BBC. Here Andy Serkis, who'd earlier appeared in The Prestige, would play Einstein, struggling to find acceptance for his theory of relativity and facing much opposition from the scientific establishment. David Tennant would play Arthur Eddington, the Quaker astrophysicist who sought to prove Einstein correct, thus undermining the Newtonian foundations of British science. Pathos would be added by Eddington being a homosexual whose beloved best friend has died at Ypres, the war making communication between British and Teutonic scientists near-impossible. Hall would play Eddington's devoted sister, Winnie, comforting him after the death and, despite not understanding his theories, acting as a sounding-board and encouraging him in his vital work.

Boosted by that Golden Globe nomination for Vicky Cristina Barcelona and a Rising Star nomination at the BAFTAs, Hall would now reap the benefits of the impression she'd made on Sam Mendes during Starter For Ten. Mendes was now involved in the Bridge Project, a joint venture between the Old Vic, the Brooklyn Academy of Music and Neal Street Productions that would see Mendes direct The Winter's Tale and The Cherry Orchard in New York, then take the productions to London. So, between January and March, 2009, Hall would find herself onstage once more, at the venue where she'd earlier starred in As You Like It, this time playing alongside Simon Russell Beale, Sinead Cusack and Ethan Hawke.

In The Cherry Orchard she'd play Varya, overseeing the family estate while her mother Cusack is away in Europe then, on her family's return, disapproving and enraged as the property slips out of their hands, even considering marriage as a means of keeping it. As the only practical member of the family, she'd look on, horrified at the others' dithering, unable to act decisively due to her lowly status in the Russian patriarchy. Then, returning to Shakespeare in The Winter's Tale, she'd play Hermione, queen of Sicilia, whose friendship with Josh Hamilton's King of Bohemia sends her husband Beale into a fit of jealousy. He tries to kill Hamilton and jails the pregnant Hall on trumped-up charges of adultery and attempted regicide. Sixteen years later, a romance between Beale's lost daughter and Hamilton's son brings about a reconciliation between the two kings and, as they all gather to view a newly completed statue of Hall, it comes to life and Hall is reunited with her husband. The plays, both concerning loss, regret and the healing power of time, would be a big success in New York, and, produced by Kevin Spacey, run at the Old Vic between May and August, also visiting Auckland, Singapore, Madrid and Recklinghausen, Hall still living that on-the-road life she shared with her parents from birth. Coincidentally, also featuring in that spring season at the Brooklyn Academy of Music would be The Merchant Of Venice, directed by Hall's brother Edward, a graduate of the RSC who'd earlier enjoyed theatrical hits when directing Natasha Richardson in A Streetcar Named Desire and Kenneth Branagh in Edmond.

. At the beginning of 2009, Hall would announce her new relationship with Simon Woods, an Oxbridge graduate who'd dated Rosamund Pike for six years and appeared in Pride and Prejudice and the TV series Rome and Cranford. He'd also made a brief appearance in Hall's Starter For Ten, playing one of James McAvoy's room-mates, who's dressed in women's clothing when McAvoy first arrives at his digs.

Back onscreen, Hall's initial appearance of 2009 would be in the first episode of the Red Riding trilogy, directed by Julian Jarrold. Set in 1974, this would see Andrew Garfield return north and take a job as crime reporter on the Yorkshire Post. Covering the horrible and weird murder of a little girl, he believes he finds a connection between the case and the disappearance of two other children, in his investigation discovering that all the local cops and journalists are either stultifyingly jaded or in the pocket of local property tycoon Sean Bean. Seeking clues, Garfield visits Hall, mother of one of the missing kids, accidentally upsets her and, returning to apologise, begins a passionate affair, only to discover that she too is involved with the charming bully Bean. Hall was again brilliant as the hardened, depressive, damaged mother, still playing with her child's toys and burying her grief in sexual abandon.

Hugely vulnerable, she wills herself to have faith in Garfield but knows deep down that all their hopes are doomed.

. Hall's big cinematic release of 2009 would be Oliver Parker's Dorian Gray, Hall taking on Oscar Wilde as her mother had done with Salome some two decades before. Here Ben Barnes would play the titular Gray, led down the path of decadence by Colin Firth's Lord Henry Wotton, believing beauty and the sating of the senses to be the only matters worth pursuing, his heinous sins marking not his face but the face of his portrait. Twenty-five years pass and Hall appears as Emily Wotton, a new woman, a feminist and a photographer. Barnes likes her and, hoping to find redemption, refuses to exploit her, but then she stumbles upon his secret, with disastrous results. Hall's character had not appeared in Wilde's book, being added to the film for dramatic effect.

An award winner for her work onstage and on film, it's near certain that Rebecca Hall will enjoy a most productive career. As it stands, she's already one of Britain's brightest and most compelling actresses. And already there are many who'd describe Sir Peter as Rebecca Hall's father.

Dominic Wills