Broadway Veteran & 'Law & Order' Star Steven Hill Passes Away at 94

The New York Times reports that Steven Hill, best known as an original cast member on both the 1960s series Mission: Impossible and the 1990s drama Law & Order, passed away today, Tuesday August 23rd. He was 94. According to his daughter Sarah Gobioff, the actor died in Monsey, N.Y.

Hill made his first Broadway stage appearance in Ben Hecht's A Flag Is Born in 1946, opposite a young Marlon Brando. He went on to appear in the hit Broadway show Mister Roberts and 1948's Bessie Breuer's Sundown Beach, staged by Elia Kazan. He appeared in the original production of Clifford Odets' The Country Girl in 1950, and in 1961, he portrayed Sigmund Freud in Henry Denker's A Far Country.

The actor portrayed the original leader of the Impossible Missions Force, Dan Briggs in the series Mission: Impossible beginning in 1966. In the 1980s and 1990s he starred in such films as Yentl (1983), Garbo Talks (1984), Neil Simon's Brighton Beach Memoirs, Heartburn (1986), Running on Empty (1988), Billy Bathgate (1991), and The Firm (1993). He also appeared as a mob kingpin in Raw Deal (1986), and starred as New York District Attorney Bower in Legal Eagles, a 1986 film.

Hill is perhaps best known as Adam Schiff in the NBC TV drama series Law & Order, a part that he played for 10 seasons (1990-2000).