Steven Hill

Born on February 24, 1922 in Seattle, into a Jewish family of Russian origin, Solomon Krakovsky (his real name), served in the Navy during World War II. He later moved to New York, to try to make his way as a stage actor.

There he became one of the first students at the Actors Studio, the famous acting school, where he had no less than  Marlon Brando  and  Montgomery Clift as classmates . After his time at the institution, he managed to make his stage debut with “A Flag Is Born” in 1946.

Without leaving the stage, he went to the movies with  A Lady Without Passport , from 1950. But he became popular as Dan Briggs, captain of a valuable team of spies, who received instructions from a tape recorder, in the first season of  Mission Impossible . He then left the show because his strong religious beliefs prevented him from working on Sabbath, hindering the pace of filming. Thus, the following year his character had been replaced by James Phelps ( Peter Graves ) in front of the protagonists, without any explanation.

As a secondary, Steven Hill developed a long career, which includes titles such as  Rich and Famous  (1981),  Yentl  (1983),  The Cake is Over  (1986),  Dangerously Together  (1986) or  The Cover  (1993). But he will be remembered above all as Adam Schiff, a relentless prosecutor in the  Law and Order series , of which he recorded more than two hundred episodes between 1990 and 2000.

Divorced from actress  Selma Stern  ( Como Dios ), with whom he had four children, he joined Rachael, mother of his other five offspring.