Steven Hill made authority convincing without making it comfortable. We rate his guarded composure and his knack for suggesting intelligence worn down by the job, though the restraint could leave his characters difficult to know.
Fi1m perspective
Steven Hill’s Daniel Briggs keeps something back, even among the composed professionals of Mission: Impossible (1966). He helps make the elaborate deceptions credible without making Briggs easy to know. We relaxed into the contrivances because Hill’s guarded composure made Briggs seem equal to them. We recommend the series for its ingenuity and performances, with a reservation that applies particularly to Hill: it can be difficult to find much of the person beyond the work.
Peter Graves’s Jim Phelps offers calm authority; Hill’s Briggs is harder to read. Greg Morris makes Barney Collier’s competence reassuring, while Barbara Bain’s Cinnamon Carter looks entirely at ease among these capable people. Hill belongs in that company without softening Briggs to make him more companionable. The drawback becomes clearer with repeated viewing: once we recognise the formula, we have rather little personal knowledge of these people to fall back on.
After one season as Briggs and a decade away from acting, from 1967 to 1977, Hill returned to work that found other uses for his reserve. He played Reb Alter Vishkower in Barbra Streisand’s Yentl (1983), then the estranged father Donald Patterson in Running on Empty (1988). That father offers a useful alternative to the officials who became familiar in his work. The Firm (1993), with Hill as F. Denton Voyles, belongs to that more familiar group.
In Dick Wolf’s Law & Order, Hill played District Attorney Adam Schiff from 1990 to 2000. His laconic delivery and slumped posture made authority look tiring, with the intelligence still apparent beneath the weariness. This was a useful development of the guarded leader: the job’s compromises could now be felt in the way he carried himself. The later seasons’ brief, repetitive mutterings narrowed what Schiff gave him to do, and restraint alone cannot make that interesting. Start with Mission: Impossible, where there is enough ingenuity around him to reward the attention his quietness asks for.
Biography
Steven Hill (born Solomon Krakovsky; 24 February 1922 – 23 August 2016) was an American actor. He began his career on the stage, making his Broadway debut in 1946 in A Flag Is Born and becoming a founding member of the Actors Studio in New York. He appeared in numerous live television dramas in the 1950s and early 1960s.
Hill is best known for two long-running television roles: as Daniel Briggs, the original leader of the Impossible Missions Force, in the first season of Mission: Impossible (1966–1967), and as District Attorney Adam Schiff in Law & Order (1990–2000). He received two Primetime Emmy Award nominations for the latter. His film credits include The Firm (1993), Billy Bathgate (1991) and Running on Empty (1988).
An Orthodox Jew, Hill left Mission: Impossible after one season owing to conflicts with the production schedule and his observance of the Sabbath. He later returned to acting after a period away from the industry.
