Lena Hall

Lena Hall first gained widespread attention during the mid-2010s through her performances in the 2013 Broadway version of the 2005 movie Kinky Boots and her Tony-winning turn in the 2014 staging of Hedwig and the Angry Inch. By then she had already spent a decade and a half appearing in stage and screen productions while serving as frontwoman for the rock outfit the Deafening, experiences that built her reputation for range and prepared the ground for later achievements.

Born Celina Consuela Gabriella Carvajal on January 30, 1980, to two ballet dancers, she grew up in San Francisco and started singing publicly as a child, including a performance for Pope John Paul II during his 1987 visit to Candlestick Park. As a teenager she enrolled in performing-arts academies, then relocated to New York in 1999 and secured the role of Demeter in Cats. Over the following several seasons she took on parts in Radiant Baby (2003), Dracula the Musical (2004), and Tarzan (2006), supplementing these with occasional national tours of established shows. In 2008 she moved briefly into film and television with a small appearance in Sex & the City, a recurring part on the daytime drama All My Children, and a short-lived stint on the reality series Legally Blonde: The Musical -- The Search for Elle Woods that ended after five episodes.

She continued balancing stage and screen work in the years that followed and, during the same period, assembled the Deafening, whose first album, Central Booking, appeared in 2012. In 2013 she adopted the professional name Lena Hall, coinciding with her entry into major Broadway assignments that began when she portrayed Nicola in the Tony Award-winning production of Kinky Boots. The next year she played Yitzhak in Hedwig and the Angry Inch and received the Tony for Best Featured Actress in a Musical. Afterward she joined the show’s touring company, performing Yitzhak on most nights while assuming the title role once a week.

The acclaim surrounding Hedwig cleared the way for additional projects. Her first solo record, Sin & Salvation: Live at the Carlyle, came out in 2015, the same year she joined the cast of Good Girls Revolt. An appearance on HBO’s Girls followed in 2016. In 2017 she portrayed Pip in the play How to Transcend a Happy Marriage and completed filming on the movie Becks. The next year she issued the Obsessed series of EPs, beginning with material from Hedwig and the Angry Inch before releasing one artist-themed collection each month that featured her interpretations of songs by Radiohead, David Bowie, Muse, P!nk, Elton John, Beck, and others.