Actor/director/screenwriter Vondie Curtis Hall has had success in both film and television, and on both sides of the camera.
His feature as writer/director was Waist Deep, which was named one of the year's Ten Best films by author/columnist Stephen King. The Rogue Pictures release starred Tyrese Gibson, Meagan Good, Larenz Tate, and The Game.
Mr. Hall also directed Redemption: The Stan Tookie Williams Story, which played at the Sundance Film Festival and then aired on the FX cable network. Mr. Hall won a Black Reel Award for his direction; among the biopic's other honors, lead actor Jamie Foxx received NAACP Image and Black Reel Awards as well as Golden Globe, Independent Spirit, and Screen Actors Guild Award nominations for his performance as the late activist Stan Tookie Williams.
His other feature credits as director include Gridlock'd, from his screenplay and starring Tim Roth and the late Tupac Shakur, for which he was honored by the National Board of Review with the Excellence in Filmmaking Award; and Glitter, starring Mariah Carey. For television, he has helmed episodes of such series as Sleeper Cell, The Shield, Firefly, and ER.
The latter program has featured Mr. Hall in a guest-starring arc, as well as in an earlier (separate) characterization that earned him an Emmy Award nomination. He was a series regular on Chicago Hope (for which the ensemble twice received Screen Actors Guild Award nominations) and Cop Rock. He also had guest-starring arcs on the acclaimed television series Soul Food and I'll Fly Away.
He began his career in music, training at Juilliard and then starring in several NYC stage shows. Among them were such Broadway musicals as It's So Nice To Be Civilized; Lena Horne: The Lady and Her Music; Stardust; and the original production of Dreamgirls.
Mr. Hall next segued into films, with roles in such movies as John Landis' Coming to America; Jim Jarmusch's Mystery Train; Ridley Scott's Black Rain; Renny Harlin's Die Hard 2; John Sayles' Passion Fish (opposite Alfre Woodard); Joel Schumacher's Falling Down; Spike Lee's Crooklyn; Phillip Noyce's Clear and Present Danger; John Woo's Broken Arrow; Baz Luhrmann's William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet; John Herzfeld's telefilm Don King: Only in America (for which, as Lloyd Price, he won a Satellite Award); Leon Ichaso's telefilm Ali: An American Hero (as Bundini Brown); and his wife Kasi Lemmons' Eve's Bayou (for which he received an NAACP Image Award nomination).
He is board president of Film Independent, which is the organization that encompasses the Los Angeles Film Festival and the Independent Spirit Awards.
Mr. Hall's next project as writer/director is The Big Biazzaro, based on Leonard Wise's novel of the same name, to star and be produced by Pierce Brosnan.
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