Following in his father's footsteps, Richard A. Wolf began his career as an advertising copywriter and producer, responsible for more than 100 commercials in the early seventies. He helped launch campaigns for Crest toothpaste ("You can't beat Crest for fighting cavities") and National Airlines ("I'm Cheryl,  fly me"), learning the power of the brand in the process. During the mid- 1970s, he pursued screenwriting, but few of his scripts became finished films. Wolf himself produced his first film, Skateboard (1978), a teenage story starring Leif Garrett. The failure of his second film, Gas (1981), about phony fuel shortages, led to writing stories for the seminal police series Hill Street Blues, whose creator Steven Bochco was a childhood friend. During this period he changed his screen credit to the more casual Dick Wolf. He also wrote scripts for the stylish Miami Vice, later becoming story editor and executive producer of the Michael Mann series. Wolf continued his movie career, writing such diverse films as No Man's Land (1987), an undercover police ad­ venture with Charlie Sheen; Masquerade (1988), a romantic thriller in the tradition of Hitchcock starring Rob Lowe; and School Ties (1992), a teenage drama about anti-Semitism featuring early appearances by Brendan Fraser, Matt Damon, and Ben Affleck. Throughout his career Wolf would experiment with a variety of genres, but his affinity is clearly for the traditional crime drama.

     Tackling his own television projects, Wolf eschewed the serialized narrative of Hill Street Blues and drew inspiration in the self-contained stories of such 1950s staples as Dragnet and Perry Mason. In the crowded television universe Wolf wanted to create a recognizable landscape where plots are resolved each week with a distinct, formulaic pacing so that viewers could tune in any time and still understand what was transpiring. Wolf created a series with four lead characters, two detectives and two lawyers. Law & Order, a hybrid police and legal series with a complex perspective on the criminal justice system, was rejected by two networks before NBC took a chance in 1990 when such comedies as Roseanne and The Cosby Show ruled the airwaves. Wolf himself hedged his bets, thinking his hour-long drama could be sold as two half-hours in syndication. Law & Order started slowly, but it was on cable, first on A&E and then TNT, that the series, seen as an hour program repeated throughout the day, reached cult status.

     Starting with Law & Order, Wolf developed several production strategies that would define his best series. He based episodes on actual events in the news. With this "ripped from the headlines" approach, Wolf and his writers could turn real life into fiction faster than any television movie or theatrical film. Wolf also carried on the legacy of Naked City and The Defenders by filming in the streets of New York City. The multicultural diversity and surreal insanity of urban life became constant motifs in Wolf's work. Wolf has also consciously made action as important as character in his core series, making sure that any changes in the cast, for whatever reason, would not disrupt the pleasure of his narrative.

     One of Wolf's major ambitions is to head an independent production company responsible for quality programming, very much in the tradition of Grant Tin­ker's MTM. As Law & Order developed a critical and popular momentum in the early 1990s, Wolf attempted other projects, but they were short-lived and largely forgettable, including the futuristic cop show Mann & Machine (1992) and a reformed con artist drama, South Beach (1993). He was more successful with New York Undercover (1994-98), a FOX series that combined his gritty, cinema verite visuals with the beat of the emerging hip-hop culture. When other excursions into the crime genre failed (Feds, 1997, and Players, 1997-98), Wolf, with his adman sensibility, decided to brand Law & Order, creating other series with the same contained story formula and similar dramatic beats. In 1999 Law & Order: Special Victims Unit debuted, with an emphasis on the investigation of sex crimes. In 2001 Wolf extended the franchise with Law & Order: Criminal Intent, a journey into the deviant mind led by a modern-day Sherlock Holmes. The original Law & Order was signed through 2005, which will make it the longest-running hour-long drama in television history.

     As the Law & Order brand extends into books, computer games, and DVDs, Wolf continued the search for another hit series. He has tested the reality genre several times, including Arrest & Trial (2000), a first-run syndication series following criminal cases from investigation through the final verdict, and Crime & Punishment (2002), a "drama-mentary" spotlighting actual trials, organized around Wolf's patented four­ act structure. Wolf tried to revive the newspaper genre with Deadline (2000), about a crusading columnist who recruits graduate students to take on New York's power brokers. He was more successful in resurrecting a police show that inspired him: Dragnet, with Ed O'Neil as Joe Friday.

     As head of the independent company he founded in association with Universal Television, Wolf likens himself to a CEO whose main role is to hire the right people to keep his productions running smoothly. He has taken on the role of an industry leader, speaking out against the V-chip and the ratings system. Although his shows are concerned with the consequences of crime, and not the gruesome act, he is outspoken against any regulation of violent content. His "media juggernaut" Law & Order was one of the crown jewels in the Vivendi Universal corporation that was purchased by NBC, the network Wolf helped to sustain well over a decade. But business aside, it has been Wolf's uncommonly keen sense of storytelling that has kept several media giants thriving.