Martin Landau

Martin Landau (born June 20, 1928, Brooklyn, New York, U.S.—died July 15, 2017, Los Angeles, California) American character actor who had a lengthy and prolific career, often playing unsettling villains, and found his greatest successes later in life.

Landau began working as a staff cartoonist for the New York Daily News when he was 17 years of age, a job he held for about five years before deciding on a career as an actor. He worked in summer stock in New England, and in 1955 he was accepted into the Actors Studio, where he studied under Lee Strasberg, Elia Kazan, and Harold Clurman. In 1957 Landau was cast in the touring production of Paddy Chayefsky’s play Middle of the Night, and he also appeared during the 1950s on such television shows as Armstrong Circle Theatre and Schlitz Playhouse as well as The Big Story, Maverick, and Rawhide.

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He made his film debut in the war picture Pork Chop Hill (1959). He won notice for his menacing portrayal of the villain’s henchman in Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest (1959). Landau maintained a thriving career playing guest parts on TV shows punctuated with occasional movie roles. He played a Roman general in Cleopatra (1963) and Caiaphas in The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965), and he turned in a comic performance as Chief Walks-Stooped-Over in The Hallelujah Trail (1965). Landau’s role as Rollin Hand, a master of disguise, in the popular TV series Mission: Impossible (1966–73) brought him widespread recognition and three Emmy Award nominations (1966–69), as well as a Golden Globe Award (1968). He left the series after the first three seasons, however.

Landau’s career lagged in the wake of his leaving Mission: Impossible. He played a preacher and murder suspect in They Call Me Mister Tibbs! (1970) and starred in the TV movie Welcome Home, Johnny Bristol (1972), and he co-starred in the British sci-fi TV series Space: 1999 (1975–77). After that he appeared mostly in minor or straight-to-DVD films and in occasional guest roles on TV shows, and in 1984–85 he took the title part in a touring production of the Broadway play Dracula. A career turning point came when Francis Ford Coppola cast Landau in the role of a supportive venture capitalist in his biopic Tucker: The Man and His Dream (1988). Landau’s performance earned him a Golden Globe Award and a nomination for an Academy Award for best supporting actor. He was nominated again for an Oscar for his portrayal of a prominent ophthalmologist who has his mistress murdered in Woody Allen’s Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989). Landau later portrayed Simon Wiesenthal in the TV movie Max and Helen (1990). Landau’s performance as depressed drug-addicted former horror movie star Bela Lugosi in Tim Burton’s film Ed Wood (1994), starring Johnny Depp as the title low-budget film director, earned him both the Golden Globe Award and the Oscar for best supporting actor.

Landau voiced U.S. President Woodrow Wilson in the TV miniseries 1914–1918 (1996). His later roles included a law professor in Rounders (1998), a former movie theatre owner who believes his deceased son has returned in The Majestic (2001), a science teacher (a voice part) in Burton’s Frankenweenie (2012), and an elderly Holocaust survivor in Remember (2015). In addition, he had a recurring role on the TV series Without a Trace (2002–09), for which he was twice (2004 and 2005) nominated for Emmy Awards, and he received another Emmy nomination (2007) for a guest appearance on Entourage (2004–11).