Quotes by Martin Landau

“He epitomized that dissatisfied young teenager. He looked like the boy next door, but he behaved differently.”

“His mother died when he was a little kid, his father didnt understand him, and he was raised by an aunt and uncle and a grandfather on a farm. He had a lot of darkness, without question.”

“He drove fast, but no faster than anybody else that I knew at the time. A lot of people said he had a death wish. He did not.”

“He actually rubbed shoulders with presidents, leaders of countries, the head of the FBI, and ambassadors,”

“Life is a roller coaster, ... There are ups, there are downs, there are hills, there are valleys, peaks and so on. And [Burton] knew that there were some pictures that I did over the years with some directors that should have been turned into guitar picks, and would have been more worthwhile had they been. But he understood that I understood that.”

“It was just terrible. But here was Lugosi: old, addicted, sick. Couldnt take your eyes off him here in this terrible movie. He was fascinating and I became an enormous fan, and I said I want to do this guy justice.”

“We had talked about growing older. He used to worry that he looked like a kid when he became an actor.”

People think Im a very serious actor, which I am. But you know, if you dont have a sense of humor doing what I do, you perish.

I studied with Strasberg, Elia Kazan. They raised the bar. They werent easy to please, and they made you achieve the best you could do. Thats what a teacher does: he infuses you with passion for something.

My best stuff as a teacher was always to find the problems within each individual actor, and Ill suggest things that I know that particular actor will have difficulty with.

Mankind, his brain has embraced so many amazing things, and yet were still beating each other over the heads with clubs, excepting the bullets now, one bullet can wipe out an entire city.

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.

Actors need to trust themselves. If you trust yourself, you can trust others and leave the director outside.

Life is a roller coaster. There are ups; there are downs. There are hills; there are valleys, peaks, and so on.