Biography
Some actors and actresses remain forever associated with one memorable role that outshines all others; that is particularly true of beautiful and glamorous Deidre Hall, better known as Dr. Marlena Evans on the NBC daytime soap opera
Days of Our Lives - a part that Hall held for years.
A native of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Hall was born in the autumn of 1947 as an identical twin, and raised by her parents (a postal worker father and a high school secretary mother) in Lake Worth, Florida. She experienced her first brush with fame by vying for - and winning - the title of Junior Orange Bowl Queen at age 12, and subsequently attended a local junior college before moving to Los Angeles and kick-starting a modeling and acting career. Hall made her first several dramatic appearances as a television guest star, on episodes of such programs as
Adam-12 and
The Streets of San Francisco, then landed the lead role of Dyna Girl on the Saturday morning children's program Electra Woman and Dyna Girl.
Days, however, brought Hall her broadest recognition; producers enlisted her to play Evans in 1976, and she remained with the program until 1987, when she temporarily withdrew from the part to focus all of her attentions on a much different prime-time role: that of Jesse Witherspoon, a widow raising several children with the assist of her loveable and slightly cantankerous father, on the Sunday-night family-oriented drama
Our House. That series lasted two seasons, and in the years that followed, Hall focused her energies solely on prime-time work, in telemovies such as Take My Daughter, Please (1988) and Perry Mason: The Case of the All-Star Assassin (1989). By 1991, however, Hall opted to re-join
Days of Our Lives with a much-publicized return of Dr. Marlena Evans, and remained with the iconic series over the ensuing decades. Off-camera, Hall made headlines for giving birth to two surrogate children, experiences dramatized for viewers when she played herself in the ABC made-for-television feature Never Say Never: The Deidre Hall Story (1995).
Hall received numerous laurels over the years for her acting work, including Soap Opera Digest awards and multiple Emmy nominations. ~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide