Martin Landau Quotes
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Bad actors try to cry, and good actors try not to. Bad actors try to laugh, and good actors try not to.
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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.
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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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Harry Dean Stanton, Anjelica Huston - a lot of people have studied with me. It's paying my dues.
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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've spent a lot of time playing roles that didn't really challenge me. I suppose every actor feels that way.
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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 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.
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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.
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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.
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My mantra is 'stay perpendicular.' Horizontal is not as good.
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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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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.
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The way a character sounds is so important to how you're going to play him.
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The real good comedians, like Chaplin, would make you laugh and a second later, cry.
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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 felt I knew Lugosi. Like him, I had worked for good directors and terrible directors.
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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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I'm not speaking, you know, egocentrically at all, but I do have a very wide range.
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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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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.
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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.
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You can have immediate regrets, but if you look at stuff and say, 'Things happen for a reason', there's a fatalistic thing about it. Something will happen that will justify it in some way.