Born in Tahiti, the son of writer James Norman Hall, author of "Mutiny on the Bounty," Conrad Hall studied filmmaking at USC. He and two classmates formed a production company and sold a project to a local television station. Hall's company branched out into making industrial films and TV commercials. They were hired to shoot location footage for several feature films, including's Disney's Désert vivant (1953). In the early 1960s, Hall was hired as a camera assistant on several features and worked his way up to camera operator. He received his first cinematographer credit in 1965. Hall won acclaim for his rich and complex compositions, especially for De sang-froid (1967) and won an Academy Award for Butch Cassidy et le Kid (1969). He won two more Oscars, for American Beauty (1999), in 2000, and Les sentiers de la perdition (2002).
