Rollin HAND

Rollin Hand's role as an IMF agent was that of an actor and disguise expert. In a theatrical brochure that headed his dossier, he was described as a quick-change artist and billed as "The Man Of A Million Faces." As such, he had formidable skills in mimicry and voice imitation as well as a mastery of make-up that rivaled that of Lon Chaney, Sr. He was also an expert at sleight of hand and pickpocketing, which came into play in several missions where he would pick pockets or hide things on someone else's person without their knowledge. His language and cultural skills were formidable. He regularly passed himself off as a citizen of various Latin American and Eastern European countries and no one ever questioned his authenticity. He also successfully impersonated well-known public figures, such as the dictator of a fictitious Latin American country, rumored Nazi fugitive Martin Bormann, and indeed even Adolf Hitler himself. On at least two missions he even successfully impersonated a left-handed person, doing all gestures and reflexive actions left-handed when Rollin himself was right-handed. He successfully falsified a wide variety of maladies in the course of missions to dupe targets, including seizures and drug addiction.

His abilities as a "ladies' man" were instrumental to the success of a number of missions. On one occasion, his role would lead to him having romantic feelings for a target who was killed at the end of the mission. While he likely had the least expertise in hand-to-hand combat of the original men on the IMF team, he regularly was called upon to defend himself in hand-to-hand combat, and usually (but not always) came out on top. He was skilled with handguns and capable of killing when necessary. Rollin was willing to do solo missions as well as help with personal missions for the IMF leader.

The character of Rollin Hand was created specifically for actor Martin Landau, and indeed, as Patrick J. White's book The Complete 'Mission: Impossible' Dossier pointed out, he was almost named "Martin Land."