Michael C. Hall

Michael Carlyle Hall (born February 1, 1971) is an American actor, known for his role as Dexter Morgan in the Showtime TV Network Dexter and as David Fisher on the HBO drama series Six Feet Under. In 2010, Hall won a Golden Globe Award and a Screen Actors Guild Award for his role in Dexter.

Early life

Hall was born in Raleigh, North Carolina. His mother, Janice (Styons) Hall, is a mental health counselor at Lees-McRae College, and his father, William Carlyle Hall, worked for IBM. Hall grew up an only child; his sister died in infancy before his birth. He has said of this: "There was a very one-on-one, immediate family relationship, my mom and I." His father died of prostate cancer in 1982, at the age of 39, when Hall was 11 years old. In a 2004 interview,Hall stated: "Certainly, for a young boy, there's no good age, but I think I was on the cusp of a time in my life where I was starting to reach puberty, to relate to my father. To have him.... Something gets frozen. As you revisit it for the rest of your life, it's sort of this slow but hopefully sure crawling—out of that frozen moment."

Jennifer Carpenter

Jennifer Leann Carpenter (born December 7, 1979) is an American actress best known for playing Debra Morgan on the Showtime drama series Dexter (2006–13), for which she won a Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actress on Television in 2009.

Early life

Carpenter was born in Louisville, Kentucky, the daughter of Catherine (née Mitchell) and Robert Carpenter. She attended St. Raphael the Archangel and then Sacred Heart Academy. She trained at the Walden Theatre Conservatory program, and later at New York City's Juilliard School (Drama Division Group 31: 1998–2002). Before graduation, she was cast in the 2002 Broadway revival of Arthur Miller's The Crucible starring Liam Neeson and Laura Linney.

Career

Carpenter first attracted critical attention for her performance in The Exorcism of Emily Rose. She took home the 2006 MTV Movie Award for 'Best Frightened Performance', and also received a 'Hollywood Life Breakthrough Award'. She was also named 'Breakout Performer' at the 2006 Scream Awards.

Jennifer Carpenter (academic)

Jennifer N. Carpenter (born October 13, 1965) is a finance academic best known for her pioneering research into executive stock options. Other interests include fund manager compensation, survivorship bias, corporate bonds, and option pricing. She has been published in numerous journals including the Journal of Finance, the Journal of Financial Economics, the Review of Financial Studies, and the Journal of Business.

She is an Associate Professor at NYU's School of Business where she teaches MBA courses in debt instruments and markets, and at the PhD level, continuous time asset pricing and portfolio choice. She also teaches for the Master of Science in Global Finance (MSGF), which is a joint program between Stern and the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. Before joining NYU, Carpenter worked at Goldman Sachs & Co in the fixed income division, and she was also a lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania.

Carpenter received her BS in Economics, MA in Finance, MA in Mathematics, and PhD in Finance from the University of Pennsylvania.

Desmond Harrington

Desmond Harrington (born October 19, 1976) is an American actor. He is known for movies such as The Hole, Wrong Turn and Ghost Ship. He joined the cast of the Showtime series Dexter in its third season as Det. Joseph Quinn and appeared in a few episodes of Gossip Girl.

Life and career

Harrington was born in Savannah, Georgia and raised in the Bronx, New York. His first role was Aulon in Luc Besson's The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc. He soon after nabbed prominent roles in films such as The Hole, Ghost Ship and Wrong Turn. Harrington also appeared in the Steven Spielberg sci-fi drama Taken, in which he played Jesse Keys, an abductee of aliens.

In 2007, he guest-starred in Law and Order: Criminal Intent as a serial killer.

In September 2008 he joined the Showtime TV show Dexter.

In December 2008, he played a guest role on Gossip Girl playing Jack Bass. He reprised his role through guest appearances in season three of the show.

In January 2012, it was reported that Harrington will return to Gossip Girl in the "last third of the season". In the same month, he made a guest appearance on the Season three premiere of Justified, playing Fletcher 'The Ice Pick' Nix. He also played a small role in The Dark Knight Rises as a police officer. and the leading role in Nicolas Winding Refn thriller film The Neon Demon.

Dexter (TV series)

Dexter is an American television crime drama mystery series that aired on Showtime from October 1, 2006, to September 22, 2013. Set in Miami, the series centers on Dexter Morgan (Michael C. Hall), a blood spatter pattern analyst for the fictional Miami Metro Police Department who also leads a secret life as a vigilante serial killer, hunting down murderers who have slipped through the cracks of the justice system. The show's first season was derived from the novel Darkly Dreaming Dexter (2004), the first of the Dexter series novels by Jeff Lindsay. It was adapted for television by screenwriter James Manos, Jr., who wrote the first episode. Subsequent seasons evolved independently of Lindsay's works.

In February 2008, reruns (edited down to a TV-14 rating) began to air on CBS, although the reruns on CBS ended after one run of the first season. The series has enjoyed mostly positive reviews throughout its run and popularity, including four straight Primetime Emmy nominations for Best Drama series in its first four seasons. Season 4 aired its season finale on December 13, 2009, to a record-breaking audience of 2.6 million viewers, making it the most-watched original series episode ever on Showtime at that time.

List of Dexter episodes

Dexter is an American television drama that was broadcast on the premium cable channel Showtime from October 1, 2006 to September 22, 2013. A total of 96 episodes of Dexter were broadcast over eight seasons. The series is based on characters created by Jeff Lindsay for his "Dexter" series of novels. The series follows the life of Dexter Morgan (Michael C. Hall), a Miami Metro Police Department blood pattern analyst with a double life. While investigating murders in the homicide division, Dexter hunts and kills murderers and criminals who have escaped the justice system. Although the first season is based on the events of Darkly Dreaming Dexter, the series' subsequent seasons do not follow the novels in the series. Departing from the narrative of Lindsay's second Dexter novel Dearly Devoted Dexter, the show's writer Daniel Cerone said that the writers "didn't see the opportunity in the second book" to adapt it.

The series has received generally favorable reviews from critics, while the second season received universal acclaim. The pilot episode, which aired in the USA on October 1, 2006, attracted more than a million viewers, giving Showtime its highest series ratings in nearly two years. Encouraged by its critical success and high ratings, CBS began broadcasting Dexter for free-to-air on February 17, 2008, thus making Dexter the first program in two decades to air on a national broadcast network after being shown on a premium cable channel. Eight seasons comprising twelve episodes each have been broadcast in the United States and abroad. All eight seasons have been released on DVD and on Blu-ray; box sets containing the first three seasons were released on August 18, 2009, on both DVD and Blu-ray.