Rebecca Hall

Hall was born on 3 May 1982 in London, the daughter of the American opera singer Maria Ewing and Sir Peter Hall, an English stage director and founder of the Royal Shakespeare Company. (He was knighted for his service to theatre.)

Her mother was born in Detroit, the daughter of an African-American mixed-race father and a white Dutch mother. She is a descendant of the American Revolutionary War veteran Bazabeel Norman, a free black man.

Years later as a guest on Finding Your Roots, Hall discovered that, while her maternal grandfather, Norman Isaac Ewing, had performed as a Native American figure and was reported as a Sioux chief in newspapers, he was the son of mixed-race African-American parents, and had no Native American ancestry. His father, Hall's great-grandfather John William Ewing, had been born into slavery. After the American Civil War, he became a prominent figure in the black community of Washington, DC. Hall has 91% European DNA and 9% sub-Saharan African DNA, according to an Ancestry.com DNA test.

Hall's parents separated when she was still young, eventually divorcing in 1990. Hall has five paternal half-siblings: the stage director Edward Hall, the producer Christopher Hall, the actresses Jennifer Caron Hall and Emma Hall, and the set designer Lucy Hall.

Hall attended Roedean School, where she became head girl. She studied English literature at St Catharine's College, Cambridge, before dropping out in 2002, just before her final year. During her time at Cambridge, she was active in the student theatre scene and also set up her own theatre company. She was a member of the Marlowe Society and performed in several productions alongside her housemate Dan Stevens, an English literature student at Emmanuel College.