HAL HOLBROOK was born in Cleveland in 1925. After graduation from Culver Military Academy in 1942 he got his first paid professional engagement playing the son in The Man Who Came to Dinner at Cain Park Theatre in Cleveland. That fall he entered Denison University in Ohio, majoring in theatre under the tutelage of his lifelong mentor, Edward A. Wright. World War II pulled him out of there for three years. The Mark Twain characterization grew out of an honors project at Denison University after the war. Holbrook and his first wife, Ruby, constructed a two-person show, playing characters from Shakespeare to Twain. They toured the school-assembly circuit in the Southwest, doing 307 shows in 30 weeks and traveling 30,000 miles by station wagon. Holbrook’s first solo performance as Mark Twain was at Lock Haven State Teachers College in Pennsylvania in 1954. Holbrook pursued the Twain character in a Greenwich Village nightclub, developing his original two hours of material. Ed Sullivan saw him there and gave his Twain its first national exposure. In 1959 after honing his material for five years in front of small-town audiences all over America, he opened at a tiny theatre Off-Broadway and was an "overnight success." "The critics went wild," (Associated Press). "Mr. Holbrook’s material is uproarious, his ability to hold an audience by acting is brilliant," (Brooks Atkinson, The New York Times). After a 22-week run in New York he toured the country again and performed at the Edinburgh Festival. The State Department sent him on a tour of Europe, where he became the first American dramatic attraction to go behind the Iron Curtain. When David Merrick offered him co-star billing playing an 80-year-old Mexican bandit in a new Broadway musical, he turned down another old character role in favor of playing young Hotspur at the Stratford, Connecticut, Shakespeare Festival. He made his Broadway debut in Do You Know the Milky Way?, then played Lincoln in Abe Lincoln in Illinois for the Phoenix Theatre. In 1963 he joined the original Lincoln Center Repertory Company for two years, replacing Jason Robards in After the Fall and playing the title role in Marco Millions, the German major in Incident at Vichy and the bailiff in Tartuffe. Other roles on Broadway came along: The Glass Menagerie, The Apple Tree, I Never Sang for My Father, Man of La Mancha, Does a Tiger Wear a Necktie? with young Al Pacino. He continued touring Mark Twain in some part of every year, and in 1966 returned to New York at the Longacre Theatre and won a Tony Award, a Drama Critics Circle Award and a 90-minute CBS television special of Mark Twain Tonight!, which was nominated for an Emmy Award and seen by 22 million people. In 1970 he was brought to Hollywood to star in a controversial television series, The Senator, which won eight Emmy Awards and was canceled in one year. Mr. Holbrook has been nominated for 12 Emmy Awards, won five, and has had recurring roles in two sitcoms. His movie career began with The Group in 1966 when he was 41 years old. He’s appeared in more than 35 films, including Magnum Force, Midway, All the President’s Men, Julia, Wall Street, The Firm, Men of Honor and The Majestic. Throughout his long career Holbrook has continued to perform Mark Twain every year, including a third New York engagement in 1977 and a world tour in 1985. He has returned to the stage in New York (Lake of the Woods, Buried Inside Extra, The Country Girl, King Lear, An American Daughter), at regional theatres (Our Town, Uncle Vanya, Merchant of Venice, King Lear and the new plays Eye of God and Hotel Oubliette) and a national tour of Death of a Salesman. In his 51st consecutive year for Mark Twain Tonight!, Holbrook continues to add new material every year. He has no set program. With more than 16 hours of material, he chooses his program as he goes along. Holbrook is a sailor and in 1980 completed the single-handed Transpac Race from San Francisco to Hawaii in his 40-foot sailboat, Yankee Tar, sailing the 2,300 miles alone. With one or two friends he has sailed Yankee Tar through the South Pacific to Tahiti, Samoa, the Tongas, New Zealand and the Fiji Islands. He has received honorary degrees from universities, and in 2003 he was selected for the National Humanities Medal. He also received the Edwin Booth Award and the William Shakespeare Award and was inducted into the New York Theatre Hall of Fame. He is married to the actress Dixie Carter. Together they have five children. In the fall he and Ms. Carter will appear in Ken Ludwig’s new play Be My Baby at the Alley Theatre, Houston, and early next year in Southern Comforts, a new play by Kate Clark, at the Coconut Grove Theatre in Miami.