Quotes from Martin Landau

My mantra is 'stay perpendicular.' Horizontal is not as good.

I don't know anybody who's any good who isn't nuts.

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.

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

Bad guys don't think they're bad guys. Hitler probably thought he was a wonderful guy doing some wonderful and righteous work for Germany.

The year I got into The Actors Studio, Steve McQueen and I were the only two accepted that whole year.

Human beings are fascinating with religion and stories about not dying. Or dying and being brought back to life. I think it's just part of our make up.

I'm usually cast by people who are oddly goofy.

The more complicated the character, the better I am. It's the one-dimensional crap that I had to do for years that drove me crazy.

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

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.

The idea of death is something that doesn't make sense to a lot of people. But to bring something back - or vampires who never die - is a logical fantasy for a human being.

I did a picture called 'Lovely, Still' with Ellen Burstyn, We screened it to the AARP people in Las Vegas, 2000 of them. We got a standing ovation from people who couldn't stand.

Sergio Leone came to see me when I was doing 'Mission Impossible.' He wanted me to do 'A Fistful of Dollars.' I turned him down. I didn't want to get stuck as a stoic Western movie star.

I've always felt, pound for pound, I'm one of the best guys around; but you get stuck in people's eyes in a certain way, and it takes an imaginative director who will look at you and realize you can play different kinds of parts because you are an actor.

Harry Dean Stanton, Anjelica Huston - a lot of people have studied with me. It's paying my dues.

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.

Agents have enormous power that studios relinquished to them. The studios, when I first came to Hollywood, that's where the power was.

Pictures are packaged and cast by agents.

I look for roles where there is some kind of an arc to the story.

I run the 'Actors Studio' on the West Cost. I'm artistic director of that.

With 'Avatar,' you're beginning to see the need for less and less actors and less of an appreciation for live acting.

I don't think villains think they are villains.

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.