A biography for Martin Landauhasn’t been written yet.
“I don't like to do what I call 'the grunters' - a character who sits at a table and grunts and young people make fun of. I turn a lot of those down.”
“Great teachers are the ones who inspire you.”
“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 always believed that all it would take was a decent role. I felt like a pinch hitter with a leaden bat: that if I got a chance, I could hit a home run.”
“As a young actor, I was working much more readily and being offered more things.”
“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.”
“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.”
“Actors need to trust themselves. If you trust yourself, you can trust others and leave the director outside.”
“My best stuff as a teacher was always to find the problems within each individual actor, and I'll suggest things that I know that particular actor will have difficulty with.”
“In film, there are always things that could conceivably create artificiality in any performance.”
“A good director makes a playground and allows you to play.”
“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.”
“My mantra is 'stay perpendicular.' Horizontal is not as good.”
“All an audience wants to believe is that what's going on is happening for the first time.”
“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.”
“When someone is there for you, has your back, that's somebody to pay attention to because that's a friend.”
“I played a wide variety of roles.”
“I love an actor who comes in, ready to work. It's like a good tennis player. They hit the ball where you don't expect it, and it's great.”
“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.”
“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.”