Harry Hill was born in Aberdeen, Scotland, where his Edinburgh-born father managed the SAI fertilizer factory and his mother hailed from Musselburgh. He was educated at Aberdeen Grammar School and then pursued an honors degree course in English at Aberdeen University, where he developed a passion for comedy and drama.
To overcome a stammer, Hill began performing in a choir, and his first taste of acting came when he appeared in several student shows at university. He also created his own puppet shows and entertained his fellow students by performing at primary schools.
After graduating with honors in English, Hill took up a year-long appointment at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, a popular destination for Aberdeen English graduates at the time. However, he struggled to find work in the theatre and spent a season in summer stock in Alberta and toured with the Vancouver Playhouse to make ends meet.
Hill then spent 12 months as the artistic director of a new theatre company in Victoria, British Columbia. In 1969, he returned to university work, lecturing in English at Winona State College in Minnesota. The following year, he joined the English department of Concordia University in Montreal as a lecturer assistant, rising to associate professor.
Hill enjoyed a dual career of academia and acting, and was as comfortable in the lecture room as he was on stage. He was praised by former students as "quite simply the best teacher" they had ever had. He also appeared on radio, stage, film, and television, and was a published writer and recording artist.
Before coming to Canada in 1963, Hill performed frequently at His Majesty's Theatre in Aberdeen in musicals, operetta, and opera, as well as in modern and classical repertory. He was committed to the cultured life and the vitality of the arts, and had expensive but refined cultural tastes.
Hill did a great deal of voice work in film and television, and was probably best known for lending his plummy voice to the stuffy, rheumatism-plagued old raven Jacob Scribble in the Canadian cartoon series 'Wunschpunsch'. Sadly, Jacob was his final acting role, as Hill suffered from poor health in his last years and died of a short illness in Montreal in August 2005, at the age of 64.
