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Actor Martin Landau, Oscar-winner at 66, dies, aged 89

Martin Landau, who landed his first and only Oscar in 1994, at age 66, playing Bela Lugosi in the Ed Wood biopic, has died, aged 89. He is also well-remembered as the star of the Mission: Impossible TV series (1966-69). Starting his career in 1959, he had been nominated for the Academy Award twice before, for Tucker: The Man and His Dream (Francis Ford Coppola, 1988) and Crimes and Misdemeanours (Woody Allen, 1989).

Brooklyn-born Landau worked as a cartoonist with the New York Daily News before doing a three years’ course at the Actors Studio and worked on stage and TV too. As a17-year-old at James Madison High School, with a talent for art, he lied about his age and took a job at the NYDN, eventually going on to illustrate the popular comic strip The Gumps. This was in the mid 1940s. Seeing a colleague in a play, he was inspired to take-up acting. The colleague had put in what Landau felt was the worst performance he had ever seen, but it inspired him to believe that he could not do any worse, so he quit his job of five years and entered the world of make-believe.

In 1955, he applied to study at the iconic Actors Studio and was one of only two people selected. Guess who was the other? Steve McQueen. At the Studio, his teachers included Lee Strasberg, Elia Kazan and Harold Clurman, and he became best friends with James Dean. Even before he had completed his course at the Studio, Landau made his debut on Broadway, in the play, Middle of the Night, and, in 1959, he made his first movie appearance, in Alfred Hitchcock’s thriller North by Northwest. The same year, Pork Chop Hill, his second film, was also released. Cleopatra, The Greatest Story Ever Told and Nevada Smith (starring Steve McQueen; Landau played a dreaded killer) followed.

Along with Barbara Bain, his wife he starred as the master-of-disguise Rollin Hand in Mission: Impossible.” After three years and three Emmy nominations, he left the series, and was replaced by Leonard Nimoy, who went on to work in Star Trek as Mr. Spock, a role that had been offered to Landau first! He got more Emmy nominations, for Without a Trace and Entourage.

Back on the big screen after exiting Mission Impossible, he was seen in They Call Me Mister Tibbs (sequel to In the Heat of the Night, starring Sidney Poitier; Landau played a liberal preacher) and Meteor (Sean Connery in the lead, with Landau playing a Major-General).

Almost a decade of insignificant films later, he held the Oscar in his hands, for Ed Wood. In his acceptance speech, Landau admitted he had had a bad run, and said, “There was a 10-year period when everything I did was bad. I’d like to go back and turn all those films into guitar picks.”

2015’s Remember was a Landau gem, wherein he played an Auschwitz concentration camp survivor. I have yet to see The Red Maple Leaf, a crime drama, and The Last Poker Game, one of Landau’s farewell appearances. The Last Poker Game, premièred at Tribeca this year, is directed by world renowned neurologist, and debutant writer-director, Howard Weiner, who is 72. Two other Landau films are under post-production, Without Ward, and Nate & Al.

Head of the Hollywood branch of the Actors Studio and its Artistic Director, Martin Landau also taught acting. His students include Anjelica Huston and Jack Nicholson. It was in 1961 that Landau had to leave the classes midway, to shoot for Cleopatra (released 1963). Landau played Rufio, a general loyal to Mark Antony, during the Roman civil wars that caught Cleopatra's Egypt in their web. It was an epic that director Joseph L. Mankiewicz had imagined as two movies, with a total running time up to six hours. Studio head Darryl F. Zanuck, desperate to save 20^th Century Fox from the astronomical costs that ultimately led to huge losses, nevertheless, rejected the two parts idea, and cut about two hours of the footage. The excised footage was never found.

Landau said about the issue, “It's hard to believe that you can cut two hours out of a movie and still allow it to make sense.” He added that the director "was heart-broken" by the removal of a scene in which I cry, when told Mark Antony has died.” Apparently, Zanuck believed that a general could not be shown crying. A 243-minute version of Cleopatra, which had won four Academy Awards, was meticulously restored for its release on Blu-ray in 2013.

In recent times, Landau worked with his Ed Wood’s director Tim Burton in Sleepy Hollow (1999) and Frankenweenie (2012).

Divorced wife Barbara and their two daughters--actress Juliet and producer/casting director Susan--survive Martin Landau.