Hall: It's An Ongoing Battle

CSI: Crime Scene Investigation's resident coroner, Robert David Hall (Dr Albert Robbins), doesn't like the word "can't".

When he was in his early twenties, Hall took acting classes in college to improve his grade point average. He enjoyed acting, but it wasn't his focus at the time. "I had dreams of being a musician," he told Notable Interviews. "I had never started out wanting to be an actor." An accident at the age of 31 resulted in Hall losing both of his legs, and this changed both his life and his career path.

"I've always been a musician and I'm still a musician," he said. "I worked 12 hours yesterday on the show, but today I had a little bit of free time so I was playing the guitar." The accident didn't prevent him from pursuing his dreams. Instead, it was the reactions of other people that caused him to take acting more seriously. The loss of his legs prompted others to tell him that it was not possible for him to be an actor with that sort of disability, and that attitude spurred Hall into action. "When people tell me I can't do something, that's when I want to do it," he said.

"If you look at television or the films, you still don't [see] many people with disabilities in the arts or in the media," Hall said. "It's an ongoing battle." In fact, according to a survey done by UCLA, Hall said that "[l]ess than one half of one half percent of all speaking roles on television are uttered by people with disabilities." Ultimately, there is only so much that one man can do, and for Hall that is "to do good work in what I do."

Hall said that he has been "working hard" with various groups to change the way that the industry views disabled actors. "If you see a person with a disability doing something positive or normal or something exciting," he said, "you get a different sense of what people with disabilities can do." Hall plans to continue acting for a long time. "I'd like to keep acting until I'm 90 if I get that chance," he said. "I don't ever want to retire. I'm lucky to make a living with something I love doing. Although one day CSI will go away, acting won't."

The full interview can be read at Notable Interviews.

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