List of Six Feet Under characters
The following is a list of descriptions for characters on the HBO television series Six Feet Under, which aired for five seasons, from 2001 through 2005.
While the series ends in 2005, the finale was met with universal acclaim from both critics and viewers alike, who cited the fact that the finale looked decades forward to the end of each main character's life, as shown in the "biographies" below.
Cast table
Major characters
Nate Fisher
Nathaniel Samuel "Nate" Fisher, Jr., played by Peter Krause, is the oldest of the three Fisher siblings. In the first episode, Nate is returning to Los Angeles on Christmas Eve only to learn that his father has died.A recurring theme throughout the series is Nate searching for the ideal life. In the pilot episode, he meets Brenda Chenowith on an airplane and has sex with her upon landing. Brenda becomes his on-again/off-again lover throughout the series. Upon learning of his father's death, his mother asks him to stay, despite Nate wanting to return to Seattle. Displeased with the direction his life is going, Nate agrees to stay and become business partners with his brother in the funeral home. Nate is diagnosed with an arteriovenous malformation, and then engaged to Brenda. During their engagement, Brenda sleeps with others, claiming a sex addiction which Nate does not believe. Nate starts to have seizures and seeks treatment for his AVM. Nate marries his former roommate and girlfriend Lisa, after discovering that Lisa is pregnant with their child. When their daughter Maya is still very young, Lisa disappears and is eventually discovered to have drowned. It's later implied that she was murdered by her brother-in-law when she tried to end their affair. Nate conspired to fulfill Lisa's wishes for a "green" burial, despite her family’s wish for her to be cremated and interred in the family mausoleum. Nate reconciles with Brenda and they move in together. He agrees to marry her and have a child but Brenda miscarries on the eve of their wedding. Nate does not want Brenda's next pregnancy. He develops feelings for his stepfather's daughter, Maggie, a Quaker. After Nate and Maggie have sex, he collapses and is rushed to a hospital. Although it appears he will recover, he dies in his sleep with David by his side.
Following his death, the series spends the last three episodes addressing the other characters' lives as they attempt to cope with his absence. Natelike his fathercontinues to appear in these episodes as a mental manifestation of his surviving family.
David Fisher
David James Fisher, played by Michael C. Hall, is the middle child in the Fisher family. Prior to the start of the series, David was engaged to a woman named Jennifer Mason, but broke the engagement because he was unsure of his sexuality. David is gay but no one knows except his boyfriend, Keith Charles, a police officer, whom he met at a church social function. Keith has come out to his family and friends and quickly loses patience with David hiding his own sexuality. David joined the family business in 1989 at the age of 20 and was upset that his brother Nate did not do the same. After his father's death and Nate's return, David holds resentment towards Nate, which is resolved when Nate agrees to help with the family funeral business. At the same time, David is offered his father's old position as deacon at their local church, which frowns upon homosexuality. After breaking up with Keith over continuing sexuality issues, David briefly engages in some anonymous sex, for which he suffered ongoing legal issues. After arranging a funeral for a young gay man who was brutally murdered for his sexual orientation, David comes out to his family and resigns his post as deacon. David and Keith eventually reconcile and start planning a family together. Soon after, David is carjacked. The experience leaves him extremely traumatized and he remains so for the rest of the series. They later adopt two young boys Anthony and Durrell.David marries Keith around 2009 and they remain together until Keith's death in 2029. David dies in 2044, aged 75, at a family outing after seeing a vision of a young Keith.
Ruth Fisher
Ruth O'Connor Fisher, played by Frances Conroy, is the widow of Nathaniel, Sr and mother to Nate, David and Claire. Ruth had an unhappy and abusive childhood, so she has learned to bottle her emotions, frequently resulting in a violent outburst.Ruth married Nathaniel Fisher in 1965 after becoming pregnant with her first child, Nate, who was born while Nathaniel is serving in Vietnam. Four years later, David was born. Their last child, Claire, is born much later, in 1983. Feeling trapped in a maternal role at such a young age, Ruth resented her younger sister Sarah, an artist whom Ruth views as a free spirit.
Before the series begins, Ruth had an affair with her hairdresser, Hiram Gunderson. After Nathaniel's sudden death, she calls off the affair to mourn but rekindles the relationship some months later. Ruth takes a job at a flower shop, where the owner Nikolai becomes infatuated with her. Hiram then breaks up with Ruth and she begins seeing Nikolai. Ruth ends their relationship when she realizes Nikolai has been feeling suffocated by her attentions and has only been staying with her out of guilt.
During her daughter-in-law Lisa's disappearance, Ruth struggles with her emotions and her role of matriarch. During this time, she meets and marries geologist George Sibley after six weeks of courtship. During the marriage, Ruth discovers unpleasant facts about her new husband's past, including multiple wives and an estranged son. During this time, George becomes increasingly paranoid, particularly with beliefs regarding an inevitable nuclear apocalypse, forcing Ruth to admit him for treatments including electro-convulsive therapy. During that time, Ruth finds it hard to deal with his subsequent memory loss and emotional instability, Ruth decides to set George up with a life separate from hers before eventually divorcing him.
After Nate's death, Ruth decides she needs a change in her life and moves in with her sister Sarah and her caretaker, Bettina. Ruth dies at the age of 78 at a hospital with George and her surviving children at her bedside. In her final moments, she sees the spirits of Nathaniel and Nate.
Claire Fisher
Claire Simone Fisher, played by Lauren Ambrose, is the only daughter and third child of the Fisher family. Claire is known for being rebellious throughout her teenage years and often acts in a selfish and surly manner, yet displays genuine affection and care for her family at moments of crisis. Claire is the most creative member of the family, specializing in art and photography. Claire has several turbulent relationships during the five years of the series. Claire's high school boyfriend, Gabe, was a troubled and rebellious teen. Claire briefly questions her sexuality, experimenting with a fellow female college student, but this ends badly when Claire cannot commit. Claire also had brief relationship with Brenda's brother Billy, who has bipolar disorder. Claire dated a fellow college student Russell, who struggled with his sexuality and had an affair with their professor, Olivier.During Season 5, Claire works as a temp in a legal department where she meets and begins to date Ted, a Republican lawyer, despite having left-wing views. Ted becomes a source of comfort after Nate's death. In the series finale, Claire receives a job offer to work as a photographer's assistant in New York, but the job offer is later rescinded when the company is taken over by a corporation. Claire's mental manifestation of Nate encourages her to move to New York anyway, assuring her she will find something. Claire decides to do so, leaving her family and Ted behind, driving to NYC in her new Toyota Prius, replacing the family's vintage Cadillac hearse, which Claire wrecked. On her journey, she listens to a CD which Ted gave her, a compilation of 'un-hip' songs he listens to. In 2025, then in her 40s, Claire returns to L.A. shortly before her mother's death. Claire reunites with Ted at her mother's funeral and later marries him. According to her obituary, Claire became an award-winning photographer and taught photography as a faculty member at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts in 2018, earning tenure in 2028. Claire eventually dies of natural causes in 2085 at the age of 101, as she lies in her bed surrounded by pictures of her family - eight decades after the finale and the last to die from those introduced in the opening episode.
Brenda Chenowith
Brenda Chenowith, played by Rachel Griffiths, is Nate's girlfriend and, later, wife. Her parents are wealthy psychiatrists who were in an open marriage, flaunting their activities in front of their children. As a child, she was under the scrutiny of Dr. Gareth Feinberg and various psychologists who began documenting her odd behavior. Being a genius, however, she would study the symptoms of various mental disorders and feign them to spite the doctors. Her case was turned into a best-selling book titled Charlotte Light and Dark, which haunts Brenda into adulthood.Her brother is a successful photographer, struggling with bipolar disorder. Brenda spent much of her life taking care of Billy and has struggled to build her own life outside of Billy's illness. Billy has a strong fixation on Brenda's life and their relationship at times bordered on incest.
At the time of the series beginning, Brenda runs a shiatsu massage service out of her house. Brenda meets Nate Fisher on a flight from Seattle to Los Angeles, immediately before Nate learns of his father's death. The two begin a relationship which is often interrupted by her brother Billy who continues to find his way into her life. After she has her brother institutionalized for violent behavior, Brenda returns to college to study psychology and begins writing a novel to stave off depression. She develops a friendship with a high-class prostitute and eventually finds herself succumbing to sexual impulses outside of her relationship. Nate breaks up with Brenda after her sexual addiction is revealed. Consequently, she spirals into drug addiction and harmful behavior. Brenda moves away from Los Angeles and seeks therapy.
Brenda returns to L.A. after her father is diagnosed with terminal cancer. She then begins a relationship with her neighbor Joe, who likes to be dominated in bed. After Joe catches Brenda making out with Nate, he ends the relationship and moves out of the house they had recently bought.
Brenda reconciles with Nate and becomes pregnant. On the night before their wedding, Brenda suffers a miscarriage. Brenda eventually becomes pregnant again and begins an internship as a cognitive therapist. About this time, Nate begins spending a lot of time with his step-sister Maggie and becomes interested in her religion. After Nate's collapse and admission to hospital, he breaks up with Brenda but dies before divorce proceedings begin. Six weeks after Nate's death, Brenda successfully delivers a premature baby girl named Willa.
Brenda becomes a university professor and leading scholar on the topic of development of gifted children. Brenda later marries a man named Daniel Nathanson and has another child, Forrest Nathanson. She dies of natural causes in 2051, aged 82, while sitting talking with her brother Billy.