Quotes from Martin Landau

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.

I don't like to sound immodest, but I believe in what I can do. Sometimes it's been frustrating because I haven't gotten to bat; if you're on the bench, and an unimaginative person doesn't see you as right for a certain role, you don't get the chance to hit the home run.

'North by Northwest' took two and a half to three months to film. When I look back, I realise I wasn't intimidated by Hitchcock and Cary Grant. They were so accepting of me.

To really have craft, you must be able to repeat something as one has to do in films.

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.

If you don't trust yourself, you won't trust others. You make a choice and see where it goes.

Subliminally, I had always wanted to act. Although I had only performed in a couple of plays, I was serious about it and was subsequently trained by people like Lee Strasberg and Elia Kazan.

I trained as an actor with Lee Strasberg, Elia Kazan, and Harold Clurman, and those guys set a very high bar.

I create each character as an individual, coming from a certain place, sounding a certain way, having been introduced to things a certain way.

The Italian tough guys, dey talk real deep like dis down in dere chests... while the Irish speak way high-ah, up here in their heads.

I hung around with Jason Robards, Richard Harris, Robert Shaw, Richard Burton. I knew not to match them for drinks.

Jimmy Dean was my best friend.

I always say, if I tell you a joke right now and it's funny, you laugh. Now, we set the lights, and I tell you the joke again, it's hard to find it funny the second time.

I always treat each take as a rehearsal for the next take. That way you can find stuff and keep adding and playing until they tell me to stop.

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.

As a Jew, there's a need to keep that atrocity alive. There were Catholics and gypsies and homosexuals who died in the Holocaust, too. It's amazing that people allowed this slaughter to take place. There's a need to make these films and reiterate it happened.

No one tries to cry. You try not to cry. No one tries to laugh. You try not to laugh.

Nobody knew me. They just knew that I was the guy from 'Mission: Impossible.'

'Mission' was a mind game. The ideal mission was getting in and getting out without anyone ever knowing we were there.

It's better to live as your own man, than as a fool in someone else's dream.

I had hair down to my shoulders, a beard and mustache. I was crude and rude.

For my generation of actors, it was about the theatre. Television didn't exist. Coaxial cable didn't exist.

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.

They made a fatal mistake in doing 'Psycho' again. Why do that? Why revisit something that stands for itself?