Michael C. Hall

Michael: (About the character of Dexter) I think Dexter is a man who…a part of himself is very much frozen, or arrested in a place that is pre-memory, pre-conscious, pre-verbal. Something very traumatic happened to him, he doesn't know what that is. And I think on some level he wants to know. He denies his humanity, he describes himself as someone who is without feeling, and yet I think that he maybe suspects - in a way that maybe isn't even conscious yet when we first meet him - that he is in fact a human being. Dexter's a unique killer in that his father saw his dark impulses, shined a light on them, and told Dexter that he saw them, he accepted them, that Dexter is good and that he is worthy of love. And I think that's what enables him to focus his energies in this unique way.

Michael C. Hall: I don't think closeted homosexual morticians have the market cornered on self-loathing or sense of shame.

Michael C. Hall: In a strange way, playing David during the first season (of Six Feet Under) required me to get in touch with my homophobia. He had such internalized loathing for who he was. I certainly have moved forward in my life, in my own relationship to my self-loathing, by having played David.