A Field Guide To Rebecca Hall

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You might know Rebecca Hall from, well, tons of things! She's most often recognized as that girl from "Vicky Cristina Barcelona" who didn't want to have sex with Javier Bardem even though she really did, but she was also in such big movies as "The Prestige," "Frost/Nixon," "The Town," and "Lay the Favorite," and she's going to be in "Iron Man 3"! The woman is all over the place, and now that her boobs are on television, we felt we should write a little thingy about her general excellence.

Rebecca Maria Hall was born on May 19, 1982 in London; her father is English director Peter Hall and her mother is American opera singer Maria Ewing, so, like many of the fine women we've profiled on this site, she received part of her theatrical passion via family osmosis. Her father put her in a TV adaptation of "The Camomile Lawn" when she was nine, and even though this was the moment when she realized her life's calling, she had no interest in being a child actor. As Hall mentioned to the Guardian UK, "I just wanted to grow up and get on with it."

Rebecca sped through her mandatory private schooling, hated every second of it, was elected Head Girl anyway, matriculated at Cambridge University, studied English for two years, and then suddenly left school. The short version of the story is that she had always wanted to go to Cambridge and study English and it all seemed to fall in place too easily for her, and so after two years of loving school and being heavily involved in local theater, she pissed off her tutors, friends, and family by choosing to bounce. She notes, "I wanted to make a decision in my life that I would be really proud of. I think that gave me a lot of confidence."

Two things that Rebecca Hall is known for: playing repressed women on stage and screen, and dating famous director Sam Mendes. Because of the first thing, many people assume that Rebecca herself is repressed and even asexual, but interviewers are always surprised by how comfortable and confident she is, and if you've ever seen her in "Wide Sargasso Sea" (which you can by clicking here) you'd know that she can get nasty on screen.

Because of the second thing--the Sam Mendes thing--many people figured that Rebecca had been the cause for Mendes's divorce from Kate Winslet. The pair announced their split back in March of 2010 and "a source close to Kate" said that she was "upset" that her husband had "grown close to Rebecca." Drama bomb! Rebecca refused to talk about her connection to Sam for a long time, and when she finally would, she adamantly denied that they were dating or even ever physically intimate. In late 2011, a spokesperson for Mendes spilled the beans and said that they had been together for a while. What have we learned from this? Nothing novel, for Hall often says that she is a very private person and needs to keep certain things to herself.

Fortunately for us, Rebecca doesn't feel the need to keep her body to herself. She treated us to a beautiful view of her boobs in the bath in the first second episode of "Parade's End," the new HBO/BBC adaptation of a Ford Maddox Ford novel set in England during World War I (seen at the top of this page). Hall's character is Sylvia Tietjens, a pithy socialite who seems intent on ruining her husband and treating those around her like trash; we don't know about you, but we find this beacon of sass and nastiness extremely sexy.

Then again, we swoon over Rebecca Hall's more frigid and furious characters as well. Clearly there's something inside her that shines through every role she plays and captivates audiences. If we had to guess, we'd say its the luster of a woman who knows and fights for what she wants in every arena of life. We're forever in your corner, Rebecca Hall!

Rebecca Hall doesn't have a lot of social media going on, but she does have...
· One of those unofficial fan pages: Rebecca-Hall.org (rebecca-hall.org)