Lena Hall

Celina Consuela Gabriella Carvajal (born January 30, 1980), She made history by becoming the first person to play both Hedwig and Yitzhak in the same production during the national tour of the musical in 2016. She originated the role of Nicola in the Broadway musical Kinky Boots. Her other Broadway credits include Cats, 42nd Street, Dracula, the Musical and Tarzan, the Musical. Hall has also starred in Off-Broadway productions such as Radiant Baby, Bedbugs!!!, Rooms: A Rock Romance, The Toxic Avenger, Prometheus Bound, Chix6, Little Shop of Horrors, and the 2017 original play How to Transcend a Happy Marriage.

Hall has appeared in films such as Sex and the City (2008), The Graduates (2008), Born from the Foot (2009), The Big Gay Musical (2009), and Becks (2017), for which she received widespread critical acclaim. She has also appeared on TV shows like ABC's All My Children, HBO's Girls, Amazon Prime's Good Girls Revolt, and voiced the role of Countess Coloratura on My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic. In 2020, she joined the cast of TNT's science fiction epic Snowpiercer as Miss Audrey.

Hall was the lead singer of the band The Deafening, they released an album with original songs in 2012 titled Central Booking. In 2015, Hall released her first solo album, Sin & Salvation: Live At the Carlyle.

Biography Celina Consuela Gabriella Carvajal was born in San Francisco, California, on January 30, 1980, to Carlos and Carolyn (née Houser) Carvajal. Her father is a ballet dancer, choreographer and the co-artistic director for the annual San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival; her mother was a prima ballerina and is now a yoga master.

She has Swedish, Spanish & Filipino ancestry. Her paternal grandfather arrived from Southeast Asia Philippines to San Francisco in 1926, and her paternal grandmother is Swedish. Her sister is Calliope "Calli" Carvajal, a hair stylist.

She is a graduate of Ruth Asawa San Francisco School of the Arts, where she first studied dance, and an alumna of the Young People's Teen Musical Theatre Company in San Francisco.

Her first big break was singing for Pope John Paul II at Candlestick Park in San Francisco for over 50,000 people at the age of 7. She explained her name change to Broadway.com: "Multiple people in the industry suggested I have one name for everything. [Lena Hall] is just two shortenings of my first name and my last name. So Lena Hall is Celina Carvajal. It seemed like an easier way of people getting to know me. Lena Hall is a nice symmetrical name, and it reminds people of Lena Horne, who was a singer. And when people hear my name, I want them to think of a singer". Hall said that it was one of the reasons why she was able to let go of the Carvajal name because it was a stage name, and it felt like her ancestors would agree with her name change. in Cats, She next took over the role of Ann "Anytime Annie" Reilly in 42nd Street. understudying the lead role of Annie Oakley.

In 2003, Hall appeared in Radiant Baby, a musical about artist Keith Haring, in various roles. In 2004 she was in the original ensemble of Dracula, the Musical,

In 2008, she competed in the reality show Legally Blonde: The Musical: The Search for Elle Woods, a competition to be cast as Elle Woods in the Broadway production of Legally Blonde, and was the 3rd contestant eliminated, and starred in the Off-Broadway musicals Green Eyes, and Bedbugs!!!, in which she played the role of Carly at the New York Musical Theatre Festival.

In 2009, she was the understudy for Leslie Kritzer in the role of Monica P. Miller in the musical Rooms: A Rock Romance. Also in 2009, she took over the lead role of Sarah in the musical The Toxic Avenger at the New World Stages.

In 2011, she performed as Daughter of the Ocean in the musical Prometheus Bound, inspired by Aeschylus's Ancient Greek tragedy, at the American Repertory Theater, and also appeared as Blaze in the musical Chix6. In 2013, Hall originated the role of Nicola (played on film by Jemima Rooper) in the musical Kinky Boots, She left the role on April 4, 2015, after playing Yitzhak opposite Harris, Darren Criss, Michael C. Hall, Andrew Rannells and John Cameron Mitchell as Hedwig. In 2016, she was cast in the national tour of Hedwig, which opened on October 2, 2016, reprising her role as Yitzhak, and for one performance a week, playing the title role of Hedwig for a total of eight performances in Los Angeles and San Francisco, making her the first actor to play both roles in the same production. She played the roles in San Francisco and Los Angeles alongside Glee star Darren Criss.

Following her run in Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Hall toured North America alongside Josh Groban on his Stages Tour.

On September 28, 2015, Hall released her first solo album, Sin & Salvation: Live At the Carlyle, featuring her renditions of songs from artists such as Led Zeppelin, Tori Amos, Hozier, and James Brown. The album was recorded at the Carlyle Hotel during Hall's musical show Sin & Salvation, which ran for two weeks.

Her TV work include 9 episodes of All My Children in the role of Treena in 2009, Juicy Lucy in Good Girls Revolt (2015), the voice of Countess Coloratura/Rara in the 115th episode of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, titled "The Mane Attraction".

In 2016, Hall played Holly, a seductive yoga instructor in an episode of the HBO series Girls. She also performed the songs along with Tony Vincent for the fictional band "Dog Gone" in the 2015 PBS series Nature Cat.

She has appeared in the movies Sex and the City (2008), The Graduates (2008), Born from the Foot (2009), The Big Gay Musical (2009), and Becks (2017), in which she plays the title role and her first leading role in a feature film, and received widespread critical acclaim for her performance. It won the U.S. Fiction Award at the LA Film Festival.

In 2017, Hall starred in the role of Pip on Sarah Ruhl's Off-Broadway play How to Transcend a Happy Marriage starring opposite Marisa Tomei at the Lincoln Center.

Hall released a series of 12 digital EPs titled Obsessed in 2018, one per month. The January release consists of selections from Hedwig and the Angry Inch, while each of the others features her renditions of several songs by a different artist.

In 2021, Hall voice acted in a live-streamed reading of a science fiction screenplay called Aurora by Joe Scott, playing multiple roles. The reading, which served as Scott's YouTube channel's Halloween special and centered around the Aurora, Texas, UFO incident, saw its proceeds donated to Team Seas.

Personal life In December 2018, Hall announced her engagement to Jonathan Stein. They married on May 27, 2019. The two filed for divorce in August 2024, and the divorce was finalized in December 2025.

Discography Studio albums Title Details The Villa Satori: Growing up Haight AshburyReleased: April 10, 2020 Label: Self-released Formats: Digital download 1001Released: April 29, 2022 Label: Self-released Formats: Digital download

Live albums Title Details Sin & Salvation: Live At the CarlyleReleased: September 27, 2015 Label: Self-released Formats: CD, Digital download

Extended plays Title Details Peak chart positions USHeat. USIndie

Theater

Awards and nominations Year Award Category Nominated work Result 2008 NYMF Excellence Awards Outstanding Individual Performance Bedbugs!!! 2014 Tony Award Distinguished Performance Broadway.com Audience Awards Favorite Featured Actress in a Musical 2015 Grammy Award Featured Performance