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.

Martin Landau

Art You Yes

Great teachers are the ones who inspire you.

Martin Landau

Teacher Great You

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

Martin Landau

Life Valleys Valley

A good director makes a playground and allows you to play.

Martin Landau

Good You UN

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.

Martin Landau

Time Art Wrong

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.

Martin Landau

Time Home Chance

I could play a lot of things. And it's hard for people and logically hard and understandably hard for people to think of me for certain roles.

Martin Landau

Understand UN Think

I started teaching when I was in my 20s because Lee Strasberg asked me to, and he didn't do that with a lot of people.

Martin Landau

Art Wit Use

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

Martin Landau

Good T Stay

How a character hides his feelings tells us something about him.

Martin Landau

Us Thing Thin

I've got two daughters, and it's impossible for me to say one of them is a favorite.

Martin Landau

Two Them T

All 'Hamlets' are different, and it's the most overwritten play ever written.

Martin Landau

Written Ten T

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

Martin Landau

Yin Wit Us

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.

Martin Landau

You Will Way

I did 12 shows in 13 weeks at a summer theater in Maine where we were paid $35 a week. After taxes and $25 for room and board, I had enough money for a pack of cigarettes and a bowl of lobster bisque.

Martin Landau

Money Where Were

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.

Martin Landau

Love Wit Who

'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.

Martin Landau

Car West Were

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.

Martin Landau

Death Who Vampires

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.

Martin Landau

Work Wonderful Wonder

I've got so many stories about every film and show I've ever been in.

Martin Landau

Very T Stories

I did theatrical caricatures.

Martin Landau

Car Theatrical T

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

Martin Landau

Actors need to trust themselves. If you trust yourself, you can trust others and leave the director outside.

Martin Landau

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

Martin Landau

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.

Martin Landau

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.

Martin Landau

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

Martin Landau

A lot of the bad guys I've played just haven't had much dimension to them.

Martin Landau

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

Martin Landau

I've always been interested in science fiction.

Martin Landau

I've worked with a lot of wooden actors in my day, but Pinocchio is the best.

Martin Landau

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

Martin Landau

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.

Martin Landau

There are not many A-list directors who get to make the movies they want to make. I know two: Woody Allen and Tim Burton. Two different textures, but both get to do what they want, and that's rare.

Martin Landau

Ageism is something that does exist.

Martin Landau

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

Martin Landau

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.

Martin Landau

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

Martin Landau

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

Martin Landau

Jimmy Dean was my best friend.

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.

Martin Landau

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.

Martin Landau

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

Martin Landau

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

Martin Landau

When someone is there for you, has your back, that's somebody to pay attention to because that's a friend.

Martin Landau

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.

Martin Landau

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.

Martin Landau

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.

Martin Landau

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.

Martin Landau

It's good to make people laugh.

Martin Landau

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.

Martin Landau