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Steven Hill, who played Dan Briggs, the first leader of the IMF on Mission: Impossible, has died aged 94.

Hill started in radio, and moved to television in its very early days in the US, making his first appearance in 1949, a year before his film debut. He was cast as IMF leader Dan Briggs, but only lasted a year in the role. Although he didn’t talk about the show on the record, beyond saying it was a “bad experience”, books about Mission: Impossible suggest he was fired and only found out that he would not be in the second year from a story in Variety about his successor, Peter Graves, being hired.

He retired from acting after that for a decade but returned to make multiple film appearances, and played district attorney Adam Schiff on Law & Order from 1990 to 2000.