Biography
Saturnine character actor Martin Landau was a staff cartoonist for the New York Daily News before switching to acting. In 1955, his career got off to a promising beginning, when out of 2,000 applicants, only he and one other actor (
Steve McQueen) were accepted by
Lee Strasberg's Actors Studio.
Extremely busy in the days of live, Manhattan-based television, Landau made his cinematic mark with his second film appearance, playing
James Mason's henchman in
Alfred Hitchcock's
North by Northwest (1959). In 1966, Landau and his wife
Barbara Bain were both cast on the TV adventure/espionage series Mission: Impossible. For three years, Landau portrayed Rollin Hand, a master of disguise with the acute ability to impersonate virtually every villain who came down the pike (banana-republic despots were a specialty). Unhappy with changes in production personnel and budget cuts, Landau and Bain left the series in 1969. Six years later, they costarred in Space: 1999 a popular syndicated sci-fi series; the performances of Landau, Bain, and third lead
Barry Morse helped to gloss over the glaring gaps in continuity and logic which characterized the show's two-year run. The couple would subsequently act together several times (
The Harlem Globetrotters on Gilligan's Island (1981) was one of the less distinguished occasions) before their marriage dissolved.
Working steadily in various projects throughout the '80s and '90s, Landau enjoyed a career renaissance with two consecutive Oscar nominations, the first for
Francis Ford Coppola's Tucker: The Man and His Dream (1988), and the second for
Woody Allen's
Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989). Landau finally won an Academy Award for his portrayal of
Bela Lugosi in
Tim Burton's 1994
Ed Wood; his refusal to cut his acceptance speech short was one of the high points of the 1995 Oscar ceremony. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide