Zitat des Tages von Martin Landau:
I've always been interested in science fiction.
I still care about human behavior and the art that it takes to write a good piece and to get a cast together who cares enough to put 150 percent of their talent into a project.
My mantra is 'stay perpendicular.' Horizontal is not as good.
They made a fatal mistake in doing 'Psycho' again. Why do that? Why revisit something that stands for itself?
Pictures are packaged and cast by agents.
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.
I run the 'Actors Studio' on the West Cost. I'm artistic director of that.
I'm certainly not going to play any of Matt Damon's roles in the future. But he will eventually grow into mine, since he'll be around for a long time.
In any age range, there are some limitations in terms of good, good parts.
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.
Actors need to trust themselves. If you trust yourself, you can trust others and leave the director outside.
I did theatrical caricatures.
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.
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.
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.
An actor knows much more about a character than the character knows about himself.
I like a character that is still alive and is necessarily thinking, and either grows or diminishes or whatever.
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.
I don't know anybody who's any good who isn't nuts.
I can take scripts directly to actors. Agents don't like to hear that.
Nobody knew me. They just knew that I was the guy from 'Mission: Impossible.'
'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.
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.
'Mission' was a mind game. The ideal mission was getting in and getting out without anyone ever knowing we were there.
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.
Life is a roller coaster. There are ups; there are downs. There are hills; there are valleys, peaks, and so on.
You have to be crazy to do theater.
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.
As a young actor, I was working much more readily and being offered more things.
I was being groomed to be the theatrical caricaturist. And I know if I got that job, I'd never quit. So I quit. I knew I wanted to go into the theater... I wanted to act.
I hung around with Jason Robards, Richard Harris, Robert Shaw, Richard Burton. I knew not to match them for drinks.
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.
The real good comedians, like Chaplin, would make you laugh and a second later, cry.
I played a wide variety of roles.
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.
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.