Bug Hall

Brandon Michael Hall, widely known by his family nickname Bug, was born on February 4, 1985 in Fort Worth, Texas, United States. He grew up as the second oldest of five children and displayed an early affinity for performance, which led his parents to enroll him in acting classes while he was still in elementary school. Hall’s breakout role came at the age of nine when he was cast as Alfalfa Switzer in the 1994 feature The Little Rascals, a part that earned the young ensemble a Young Artist Award and cemented his status as a prominent child star of the 1990s. Following that success, he appeared in John Landis’s comedy The Stupids (1996) and portrayed Newt Shaw in the family soccer film The Big Green (1995), roles that showcased his comedic timing and on‑screen charm. In 1997 he provided the voice of a little boy in Disney’s animated epic Hercules, and the following year he starred as Adam Szalinski in the science‑fiction family picture Honey, We Shrunk Ourselves. Throughout the late 1990s and early 2000s Hall continued to work in both film and television, with guest spots on series such as Charmed, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, Cold Case, and Criminal Minds, as well as appearances in direct‑to‑video releases like Skipped Parts (2000). After stepping away from mainstream Hollywood, Hall converted to Catholicism in 2013 and eventually left the industry in 2020, relocating with his wife Jill de Groff and their five children to a farm in the Midwest to live a life of intentional poverty. His post‑acting years have been marked by controversy, including a 2020 arrest for inhalant misuse, a temporary ban from Twitter in 2022 over tweets advocating marital duty and corporal punishment of minors, and public criticism in 2024 for referring to his daughters in demeaning terms. Despite these challenges, Hall remains a figure whose early contributions to 1990s family cinema continue to be remembered by fans of classic kid‑driven movies.