Deidre Hall
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Deidre Ann Hall (born October 31, 1947, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin) is an actress who portrays Dr. Marlena Evans on the NBC soap opera Days of our Lives. She played the role originally from 1976 to 1987 and returned in 1991.
She is the twin sister of former actress Andrea Hall, who portrayed the role of Samantha Evans off and on on the serial from 1977 to 1982. The two also had a brother, John Terry Hall, who had Down's Syndrome and died in November 1999.
Hall was raised in Lake Worth, Florida and was a 1965 graduate of Lake Worth High School. After high school, she attended Palm Beach Junior College, graduating in 1967. She moved to southern California in 1970 and enrolled in acting courses at the Los Angeles City College. It was there, in the early 1970s, that her acting career began to take flight. Hall's first television experience was playing minor character Barbara Anderson on the soap opera The Young and the Restless from 1973 to 1975. Hall's first big role was as the superhero Electra Woman in the 1976 series Electra Woman and Dyna Girl. She also portrayed Jessica Witherspoon on the nighttime drama Our House from 1986 to 1988.
She was married to network executive Steve Sohmer from 1991 to 2005. Hall and Sohmer became parents via surrogacy, and the conception of their first child was chronicled in the autobiographical TV-movie Never Say Never: The Deidre Hall Story. Hall played herself in the movie.
In the early 1980s, she had a relationship with Ned Randolph, who was at that time a Louisiana state senator; he would go on to serve for two decades as mayor of Alexandria, the seat of Rapides Parish and the largest city in central Louisiana.
