Mourning young and restless: Heather Hill, the iconic series director and six-time Emmy winner, has died at the age of 85.

Years pass and the resident talent of the indestructible soap The Young and the Restless dies. In 2024, Marla Adams, the matriarch of the Abbott clan, left us at the age of 85. As did actress Meg Bennett, who played actor Eric Braden’s wife for 40 years at age 75.

Diversity announced the death of Heather Hill at the age of 85 at her home in Las Vegas. He worked not in front of the camera but behind the camera as he was one of the pillars of soap production.

Six-time Emmy winner

Born in Rye, New York, Hill graduated from Rye Country Day School Before starting a television career in New York in the 1970s as an assistant producer on the CBS soap opera Love of Life, which ran for 29 seasons in the 1950s and 1980s. Moving from assistant director to director, he directed episodes of TV series such as Love Is a Many Splendored Thing, It’s Already Tomorrow and As the World Turns.

In 1985, he moved to Los Angeles, where he produced The Young and the Restless while still under contract to CBS. He worked in production for 15 years, where he directed hundreds of episodes.

From 1988 to 2000, Hill was nominated 13 times Daytime Emmy Awards Best Directing Team for a Drama Series for their work on The Young and the Restless. She won the award six times, in 1988, 1989, 1996, 1997, 1998 and 1999, and shared three wins and one nomination with her husband, Randall Hill.

In addition to his huge contribution to the soap Young and the Restless, he was also credited with directing series such as Alliances & Betrayals and Baywatch, in which his friend and neighbor David Hasselhoff, a former Young and Restless actor, played Mitch Buchanan.