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You can essentially break Anthony Michael Hall's career into two halves. First you have the childhood and teenage roles that made Hall a movie star, and then you have his output as a working adult actor. While his recent work doesn't always generate the same degree of attention as those early roles in John Hughes movies, the truth is that he's done some of his very best work in the last twenty years, leading television shows and featuring in supporting roles in various films.

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The Brat Pack Superstar

Anthony Michael Hall must have one of the least surprising stage-names of all time, born Michael Anthony Hall, April 14, 1986 in Boston's West Roxbury. The only child to come of the first marriage of jazz singer Mercedes Hall, Anthony and his mother would soon move to the West Coast to pursue singing work for Mercedes, before heading to New York, where Hall spent most of his childhood. Going into acting at a young age, while attending St. Hilda's & St Hugh's School of New York, the young actor went with the name change for a fairly simple reason: There was already an SAG-registered actor named Michael Anthony Hall. Swapping the first and second name then was a handy solution.

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Like many child actors, Hall got his start on TV commercials, featuring as the Honeycomb kid in a number of ads, and helping to sell Bounty paper towels through the late 1970s. Hall's natural charm and humor would soon win him a part in Steve Allen's play The Wake (1977). More stage work would follow, leading him to eventually take on the role of a young Edgar Allan Poe in a TV adaptation of the author's short story The Gold Bug (1980). The TV movie would go on to win an Emmy, not a bad start for an actor's screen debut. Soon he would star as Huckleberry Finn in Rascals and Robbers: The Secret Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn (1981), and then Six Pack (1982) with Kenny Rogers. Hall's success seemed inevitable, but if you could pin it down to one breakout role, it would have to be Rusty Griswold, son to Chevy Chase and Beverly D'Angelo in National Lampoon's Vacation (1983). Although it's become something of a running gag to recast the children in every single incarnation of the series, Hall would be the first to play Rusty.

This film would launch Hall to superstardom in the 1980s thanks to its screenwriter: John Hughes, who had written Rusty as something of an author-insert, basing the film on his own memories of disastrous family vacations.

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In John Hughes, Hall had the best fan a young actor could hope for, given that the screenwriter was preparing to launch a new career as a director, becoming the Alfred Hitchcock of the teen comedy genre. Hall would play "Farmer Ted" in Sixteen Candles (1984), John Hughes' debut as director. In Hall, Hughes hoped to develop a whole new, more relatable kind of "movie nerd," skipping the Coke-bottle glasses and pocket protector, and portraying him more like a real teenager who just happened to be a little awkward. Hughes and Hall followed this collaboration up with The Breakfast Club (1985), which established Hall as a member of Hollywood's "Brat Pack" with Breakfast Club co-stars Judd Nelson, Emilio Estevez, Ally Sheedy and Molly Ringwold. Next would be Weird Science (1985), with Hall and Ilan Mitchell-Smith creating their own Frankenstein monster, a superhot model, played by Kelly LeBrock.

Following his run of successful John Hughes movies, Hall joined the cast of Saturday Night Live (1985-86), becoming the youngest actor to ever join the show's cast. Following this, Hall's momentum would be stalled by a few missed-roles. Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986) was actually written with the hopes that Hall would play Cameron Frye, Ferris' best friend, but Hall turned this down for fear of being typecast. He was in talks with Stanley Kubrick to star in Full Metal Jacket (1987), a role that would have launched him towards more serious dramatic projects, but financial negotiations would break down while the film was in pre-production.

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Anthony Michael Hall took a two year break from acting and then returned to play the villain in Edward Scissorhands (1990), following this up with a role in Six Degrees of Separation (1993), and Hail Caesar (1994), his directorial debut, featuring roles for Samuel L. Jackson, Robert Downey, Jr., and fellow John Hughes veteran Judd Nelson. The 90s would be lean times for Hall. No longer a "movie star," Hall now had to build his status back up.

"In the years since I worked with John Hughes, there were many years where I literally had hundred of doors slammed in my face because I wasn't that kid anymore, and I wasn't a character actor, and I wasn't a leading man, and I wasn't whatever Hollywood was looking for."

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Pirates of Silicon Valley

"Cutting edge, breakthrough, television. That's what we want to do."

By the late 90s, TV was changing. No longer the movie theater's little sibling, television was the new hit-maker. The Sopranos (1999) made a big difference. Here was a TV show as deep, as well-produced and as high-caliber as any feature film. This was the perfect place for Anthony Michael Hall to prove that he could be a heavy-hitter, and that's what he did, playing Bill Gates in Pirates of Silicon Valley (1999). The film was one of the earliest examples of a made-for-television movie that seemed to draw as much media attention as any Summer blockbuster, tracking the early days of the then-young personal computer revolution. 

"It's funny, like 15 years ago when I was a kid doing all the John Hughes movies, I remember Bruce Willis was the only guy who was transitioning from television into film."

This would be the official comeback for the actor, landing Hall the leading role in The Dead Zone (2002-07), starring as Stephen King's Johnny Smith, the psychic police consultant from the novel of the same name.

Finally, Hall had matured fully into a new persona as an adult actor, carrying few echoes of the nerdy teen who dominated the 1980s film scene. He would feature in a number of supporting roles in films like The Dark Knight (2008) and War Machine (2017), and on TV shows like American Dad! (2019) and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (2019), and makes a memorable appearance in two episodes of Community (2009-11), playing an aggressive middle-aged jock, a clever spin on his earlier geek roles.

"I think that obstacles lead to growth and ultimately, the most learning I've done in my life is between jobs."