Martin Landau Quotes
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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.
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The way a character sounds is so important to how you're going to play him.
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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.
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With 'Avatar,' you're beginning to see the need for less and less actors and less of an appreciation for live acting.
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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.
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I'm not speaking, you know, egocentrically at all, but I do have a very wide range.
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They were like little palaces: all rococo or art deco. You'd walk in off those hot streets into a nice, air-cooled theater, and you'd spend all day watching Cagney or Jimmy Stewart. It cost all of 17 cents.
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The fact that I wound up doing television and film was just a thing that happened, but I was trained for the theater, and what goes on in the theater has nothing to do with special effects.
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I run the 'Actors Studio' on the West Cost. I'm artistic director of that.
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I've turned down a lot of roles. Some of them made stars out of the people. I have no regrets.
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I've got two daughters, and it's impossible for me to say one of them is a favorite.
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I love to see lack of clarity in a performance as well as clarity, as well as trust, as well as the kinds of things that human beings go through. I love to see spontaneity and 'inevitability.' How it gets there is going to shock the hell out of me, but it will get there somehow.
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If I were a writer, the Pulitzer Prize would be important to me. This is my profession, so an Oscar is important.
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Bad guys don't think they're bad guys. Hitler probably thought he was a wonderful guy doing some wonderful and righteous work for Germany.
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In any age range, there are some limitations in terms of good, good parts.
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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.
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My father was an Austrian, and he brought some Torahs over to this country, ancient Torahs that were slipped out of Germany.
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The more complicated the character, the better I am. It's the one-dimensional crap that I had to do for years that drove me crazy.
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The real good comedians, like Chaplin, would make you laugh and a second later, cry.
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A lot of the bad guys I've played just haven't had much dimension to them.
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A lot of the time with an independent production, you go onto the set, and you rehearse it in front of the crew, and at that point, the cinematographer takes over. You start accommodating the camera instead of the camera accommodating you.
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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.
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I like a character that is still alive and is necessarily thinking, and either grows or diminishes or whatever.
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You can't perish because of your own feelings; you have to embrace those things as an actor because it's part of your palette.