Martin Landau
10 quotes
Biography
Martin James Landau was an American actor. His career began in the late 1950s, with early film appearances including a supporting role in Alfred Hitchcock's North by Northwest (1959).
"My mantra is “stay perpendicular.” Horizontal is not as good. Half the people that came along and up with with me are either gone to another dimension or don’t remember what they had for lunch. I’m fortunate. I don’t know why. I just want to have a good time."
"Doubt is an important part of the human being. Trust has to be attained. If you don’t trust yourself, you won’t trust others. You make a choice and see where it goes."
"I have done some films along the way that have been screwed up and not as good as they read. Some films that are not that good on the page turn into good movies. So I’m fallible is what I’m saying. It’s OK to be wrong. You learn from your wrongs. You don’t learn from being right. If you’re right, you already know it. If you’re wrong, it’s because you don’t know about it, and you made a mistake."
"People think I'm a very serious actor, which I am. But you know, if you don't have a sense of humor doing what I do, you perish."
"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."
"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."
"Mankind, his brain has embraced so many amazing things, and yet we're 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."