Martin Landau Quotations

You can have immediate regrets, but if you look at stuff and say, 'Things happen for a reason', there's a fatalistic thing about it. Something will happen that will justify it in some way

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.

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

And the 90% they are not is what I do for a living.

Just five years before that the Russians were our allies

The real good comedians, like Chaplin, would make you laugh and a second later, cry

I'm very proud of Space 1999. Its success paved the way for other sci-fi shows to follow. My hope is that the DVD release will help it reach a new generation of fans

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

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.

His mother died when he was a little kid, his father didn't 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.

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

It was just terrible. But here was Lugosi: old, addicted, sick. Couldn't 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.

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

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

What can I do to help? I am asking my senator to support political action to end hunger in the greatest country on this planet.

Any good director creates a playground. That's what they do. They hire the right actor, open the door and let them play because stuff will happen, right then and there. The audience wants to believe that what's going on is happening for the first time, ever. That's what acting is. That's what good scene writing is.

God is a luxury I can't afford.

I did theatrical caricatures.

I try to never repeat a character. I always try to find something new and fresh and interesting that inspires me.

An awful lot of actors who are considered very good actors are not very good actors. There are people who just strike gold, they have intrinsic talent but the point is that if they did train...it would only broaden them more.

The actor has to have some degree of craft, along with the talent. No one tries to laugh except bad actors. No one tries to cry except bad actors. How a character hides his feelings tells us who he is. Most people don't know that, and most actors don't do that. Therefore, there are a lot of actors who put me to sleep, that are considered good actors, but they're predictable and boring. I know how the scene is going to end before it ends.

I've always been interested in science fiction

Everyone can walk and talk. Your job is to create magic.