Martin Landau Quotes
-
I don't like to do what I call 'the grunters' - a character who sits at a table and grunts and young people make fun of. I turn a lot of those down.
-
Harry Dean Stanton, Anjelica Huston - a lot of people have studied with me. It's paying my dues.
-
The modern cineplexes are mundane, dull boxes. But 'The Majestic' pays tribute to the movie palaces that made people feel like royalty. It honors a time when pictures helped Americans get through grim periods like the blacklist and the war.
-
I was offered the Gene Hackman role in 'The Poseidon Adventure' four times, and I turned it down four times. I didn't want to do that movie. I called it the upside down boat.
-
I could play a lot of things. And it's hard for people and logically hard and understandably hard for people to think of me for certain roles.
-
Every young actor wants to do 'Hamlet' on the West End. Why? Because they can bring something to it.
-
Ageism is something that does exist.
-
The real good comedians, like Chaplin, would make you laugh and a second later, cry.
-
I always tried to play the bad guys as guys who didn't know they were bad guys. There are villains we run into all the time, but they don't think they are doing anything wrong. If they do, they think they are cunning and smart. When people break laws and ethical rules, they justify it in their own terms.
-
I'm not speaking, you know, egocentrically at all, but I do have a very wide range.
-
The way a character sounds is so important to how you're going to play him.
-
Of course, I remember the Disney 'Pinocchio.' I was a little kid then... It was very instructive. Little boys who don't behave wind up in lots of trouble.
-
My mantra is 'stay perpendicular.' Horizontal is not as good.
-
I did a picture called 'Lovely, Still' with Ellen Burstyn, We screened it to the AARP people in Las Vegas, 2000 of them. We got a standing ovation from people who couldn't stand.
-
I always believed that all it would take was a decent role. I felt like a pinch hitter with a leaden bat: that if I got a chance, I could hit a home run.
-
I studied with Strasberg, Elia Kazan. They raised the bar. They weren't easy to please, and they made you achieve the best you could do. That's what a teacher does: he infuses you with passion for something.
-
With 'Avatar,' you're beginning to see the need for less and less actors and less of an appreciation for live acting.
-
I create each character as an individual, coming from a certain place, sounding a certain way, having been introduced to things a certain way.
-
Everything that has happened to me is of value to me. As painful as certain things are, and have been, and were, there's a use for those things in my life and in my work.
-
I'm a big believer that an actor should be able to pick up any piece of material and act it, the way a good musician can.
-
The Italian tough guys, dey talk real deep like dis down in dere chests... while the Irish speak way high-ah, up here in their heads.
-
I think we've all done things we're not particularly fond of. Everybody goes through it and comes out the other end, and goes on with his life as if it didn't happen.
-
I've got two daughters, and it's impossible for me to say one of them is a favorite.
-
I run the Actor's Studio on the West Coast, and one of the things I say all the time to the people I teach - many of whom are acting teachers - is that an actor needs to make choices that make him present.