Rebecca Hall on Inheritance and Identity
Born into a family of artistic brilliance and buried histories, actor and filmmaker Rebecca Hall continues to explore how identity is shaped by what’s revealed and what’s concealed.
Photography Stefan Ruiz
Creative Direction Marie-Amélie Sauvé
This article was published inMastermind 17, April 2025. Purchase all issues here.
The enigmas of inheritance have been a lifelong fascination for the actor, director and artist Rebecca Hall. The daughter of Sir Peter Hall, an acclaimed theater director and founder of the Royal Shakespeare Company, and Maria Ewing, a leading opera singer, Hall grew up surrounded by British cultural royalty, a milieu that irrevocably shaped her path in life, but there was a degree of repression and erasure in her family tree – namely, concerning her mother’s origins – that left her with unanswered questions about her heritage.
Hall has pursued these vagaries in her life and art, most notably in her directorial debut, Passing (2021), based on the Nella Larsen novel. Set in 1920s New York, it follows the lives of two Black women – one of whom “passes” as white. The film is intelligent, stylish and haunting – terms that could also describe the many memorable performances Hall has delivered over the years as an actor. They include the pragmatic student Vicky, who is tempted by passion in Woody Allen’s Vicky Cristina Barcelona; her Bafta-winning role in the miniseries Red Riding: 1974 as Paula Garland, the broken mother of a daughter whose murder remains unsolved; and, most recently, in the miniseries The Listeners as Claire, whose life un-ravels after she begins hearing an inexplicable hum that nobody around her notices.
Are you an actor who inherits something from the roles you play? Do your characters change you?
REBECCA HALL I used to take things with me a little more when I was younger. I realized that was an indulgence that was not necessary and, if anything, messed with my brain. I worked hard to let go of that habit, and now I truly don’t. The truth is that in every role, all the choices I make are my choices. They come from my psyche. There is a kernel of me in everything. Sometimes I’m not even aware of what it is, and sometimes I will find out something about myself by playing a character that is very far away from myself.
Is it clear to you what kernel you gave your character, Claire, in The Listeners?
RH I was using a lot of myself. On a really basic level, she talks like me, she looks like me. That sounds glib, but sometimes my characters don’t. When I read it, I was very aware she needed to be an everywoman. Yes, she is witty and smart and funny, but she’s basically likable and relatable, someone of whom you might say, “I know a person like her.” I felt the way to make that work was to just be me in that situation, me if I made those choices, and then go where the story took me – though I may not have made the same turns.
One project that I know has stayed with you is Passing, particularly as it related to your mother’s own story of passing as white. What was her reaction after seeing the film?
RH She was incredibly moved by it. Initially, it was hard for her, I think, to talk about it in relation to any resonance in her own life. But she was incredibly moved by the film, and she was crying when she spoke about it to me.
Later, as it settled a bit, there were more conversations about how white passing has affected her life, or, frankly, admitting that it was a part of her life. That came with other details, specifically after going on that show Finding Your Roots.
Right, you went on the ancestry TV series where they unearthed documents about your grandfather and great-grandfather.
RH Yeah, my great-grandfather was an activist who was a friend of Frederick Douglass. Wild! It was interesting in what it did to my mother, showing her the thing she was missing. Her inheritance wasn’t pride; it was only shame, only racism, only a sense that she should be in hiding. It was so stark for her to realize she didn’t inherit any pride. There were enormous things to be proud of in her family lineage around her Blackness, but she had a complicated relationship with it, in the sense that she was responding to the environment she grew up in, which was often one of fear. That inheritance took a toll on her psyche.
What interested me about the book Passing is that it’s less about race than it is the role of living in a racist society and what that does to your psyche. I remember calling her up and saying, “I really think you should read this book, and I think I’m going to try and turn it into a movie.” And I remember her saying, “Why? What do you mean? Look at you.”
Referring to your whiteness?
RH Yeah, I think that’s what she was referring to. As in, you have assimilated, you are entirely white now, why would you refer to this again? I understand where it was coming from. She was raised in this environment of fear. The fact that she had me, and I turned out to be not just white but also to have an English accent and present as an English rose and be in period dramas, it’s like, great, she’s not going to be frightened of anything, it’s over. From my perspective, it wasn’t over. There were elements of my upbringing that were shrouded in this same fear. It took a toll on my upbringing because she looked at me and said, “Behave this way, do this, don’t do that.” I felt like so much of her being had a performative element to it. She left Detroit; she became an opera singer, became a grand diva with this transatlantic accent and had this house she raised me in, full of Laura Ashley chintz. I feel that was all rooted in this initial sense that one must perform one’s identity. You can’t just be yourself.
Do you ever rewatch her performances?
RH Yes, I do. It’s hard for me. My whole childhood was about, is she performing next week? Is she getting enough sleep? Is she anxious? What can I do to help? I would make her meals; when I was like seven years old, I would boil rice to make sure she had a proper meal before going to rehearsal. But in the midst of all that haze, my sense of her as an artist was always absolute. There’s no one like her. When she went on a stage, what she did was mind-blowing and had this astonishing effect on people. I can go back now and show my daughter an excerpt of Carmen, and I see with immense pride how incredible she was. There are wonderful things about being raised in the midst of that, as well as incredibly hard things.
Both of your parents were from working-class backgrounds and became part of the cultural elite. What stories did they tell you about their upbringings?
RH None. [Laughs] I’ve got nothing. My mother really was hard-pressed to talk about any of it. Things would slip out sometimes. She would talk about her father with great love. When he wasn’t at work, he’d be at home in the basement, where he’d paint, apparently, and listen to records and play the piano. My mum would talk about sitting with him and how their relationship was just listening to music. That’s how she discovered she could sing: he’d put on opera records, and she’d mimic it. But her father passed away when she was 16, and I think the most I ever got about her life there, in Detroit, were those stories about sitting and listening to music with him. That, and the story about how she found out she was Black the first time.
She lived next door to this white racist family who were very religious and friendly toward her until one day her father’s identity got exposed. She came home from school with her father, and they started screaming, “Go home (expletives).” That’s how she found out, just through pure hate, the first experience of her race. Those are the only stories I have, really.
My dad, by the time he had me, was already in his 50s. I feel like lifetimes had happened. He didn’t really have a memory for pain. It was an extraordinary defense mechanism. Anything that was complicated or difficult, he would experience it fully and then move on. He would always be looking forward, but he very rarely spoke about the past. My strongest memory of my father is conversations about the future. Never about the past.
Do you see a connection between that tendency and your father’s upbringing?
RH Probably, yes. He had a Suffolk accent at one point, and, as everyone did in 1960s England, if you were upwardly mobile, suddenly you started speaking in this incredibly posh, clipped way. So, by the time he had me, that was him. There was no sense of that working-class origin.
You spent much of your childhood watching your parents’ rehearsals. Was there anything you saw that marked you?
RH Yes, a lot. On my mother’s side, I saw her capacity to go into rehearsal, start singing and be completely emotionally raw and vulnerable immediately, whether she wanted to or not. It was incredibly powerful and moving – and disturbing, as a kid, because I was very worried for her. Which I’m sure has informed how I navigate being emotionally vulnerable as a performer. I know I have things I have to protect.
On my father’s side, I spent a lot of time in his rehearsal rooms. I remember watching Judi Dench. I have a memory that involved a really nasty scene where she put razor blades in a bar of soap for her husband, and he hurt himself. It was really dark and upsetting, and it stuck with me forever because it’s a really disturbing idea. It was The Gift of the Gorgon, 1993. I also remember watching Judi Dench, in rehearsals, having the thing that my mother had of being able to immediately access a state of very real, harrowing, extreme emotion and then stop it and be able to pivot. It was wonderful to watch because it gave me an example of someone who could do that and remain personally, psychically grounded. Judi Dench was tremendously fun to watch in a rehearsal room. She would make everybody laugh all the time.
Did your parents ever discuss the public spotlight that would be on you and how to manage that?
RH Yeah. They had a lot of negative experiences with the press, and I had a lot of negative experiences with it when I was very small. My mother had an extremely hard time with her public persona. They would say things like, “The trick of it is to seem like you’re giving everything and give nothing.” For a long time, I was like, of course, that is the trick of it! Often you come to an interview, and you get the impression the journalist has already decided what they want to write about. I’d been in that situation when I was younger and had the feeling of, well, I must remain mysterious. And the truth is, I’m terrible at doing that. I’ll just give you whatever you want. I had a certain brittleness and terror around this for most of my career, and I’m only just letting go and being like, “You know what? Whatever.”
Does that mean you’ve become accustomed to the spotlight?
RH I don’t know if it’s something I’ll ever be accustomed to. I have a very ambivalent relationship with it. I have always wanted to do what I do and be acknowledged for it. I want to be lauded and celebrated and considered a great big fat shining star – but also, I’m like, “Don’t look at me!” It’s an aspect of being raised by the people I was raised by. It’s not just about being more accustomed to fame. My level of fame has stayed pretty much the same; it’s not an upward progression. It’s the fact that my mother isn’t around anymore; my father isn’t around anymore. The weight of protecting her has gone.
I understand you’re working on a new film about your mother.
RH It’s inspired by my childhood in many respects, but it’s not about my mother, and the other characters aren’t real, either. An interesting aspect of my childhood is that the people who I was drawn to, who saw me, were often young, queer men. My mother was surrounded by these kids who often worked as dancers or in the chorus; they were the people she befriended in operas. She would often be very maternal with them and look after them. It was an interesting dynamic for me because I would see her being a wonderful mother with these young boys, and I’d be a bit confused by that at times. But then I would become close to them, almost like siblings. There was something about this idea that got me thinking about straight women, or burgeoning straight women, and their relationship to the queer world when they’re not necessarily queer. The story is about a 12-year-old and these four 18-year-old kids who come to spend a weekend with this diva of the Broadway stage. This 12-year-old is looking for people who might give her some friendship, some context, some intimacy. And she gets it with these guys, who are very kind to her.
You’ve spoken about the difficulties in getting Passing made. Is it easier this time around?
RH Not yet, no. I’m really unlucky in my timing. Passing was a pandemic movie. Then we hit the year of the strikes while I was trying to get funding for this movie. I keep hitting these huge obstacles. So, I’m still struggling. But hopefully I’ll get there. I have some other things in the pipeline which may end up happening before that one does, which would make me sad. I’ll get it made one day.
Rebecca Hall wears clothing and accessories by PRADA throughout. Fashion by Xenia May Settel. Hair by Tsuki. Makeup by Susie Sobol. Production by Alexes Bowyer.