RIP Martin Landau.
Another good one gone and one of my favourite performers. A truly gifted actor whose talents seemed to be utilised best at the beginning of his career and toward the end with a fallow middle period.
A member of the renowned Actors' Studio in the 1950s, Landau's contemporaries from that school included James Dean, Marlon Brando, Anne Bancroft, Montgomery Clift, Patrica Neal and many others.
Like those famous alumni, Landau displayed an intensity and depth in his performances that seemed to earmark the graduates of The Actors' Studio, but despite this seemed destined for supporting roles only. Accordingly, as a jobbing actor he divided himself equally between films and television, doing the usual guest star rounds of popular shows of the day such as 'The Twilight Zone', 'Bonanza', 'The Outer Limits', 'The Alfred Hitchcock Hour', etc, while simultaneously appearing in big budget cinema entries like 'North By Northwest' (thoroughly excellent as the creepy Leonard), 'Cleopatra' and 'The Greatest Story Ever Told'.
In the mid '60s stardom of a kind eventually arrived. After narrowly losing out on the role of Spock in 'Star Trek', Landau's moment in the spotlight finally came with his casting as master of disguise Rollin Hand, in the TV series 'Mission Impossible'. It was however a role that barely taxed his talents, as 'MI' was a show about clever plot turns rather than performances, but it did serve to finally raise his profile and put him in the spotlight.
Ironically with this degree of stardom came a decline in the quality of film projects he was involved in and then of course there was the awful 'Space 1999', probably the nadir of his career. Sorry Anderson fans, but it was a pile of sh*te and totally unworthy of the man's talents.
A change of fortune came about after his 1988 appearance in Francis Ford Coppola's 'Tucker: The Man and His Dream' for which Landau earned several best supporting actor nominations including an Oscar nod.
Hollywood seemed to suddenly realise that they had an incredibly talented elder statesman in their midst and a year later another Oscar and Golden Globe nomination followed for Woody Allen's 'Crimes and Misdemeanours', for my money the performance of his career.
Oscar recognition finally came his way in 1994 when he scooped the Best Supporting Actor statue for his superb turn as Bela Lugosi in Tim Burton's 'Ed Wood', also grabbing the awards in this category from the Golden Globes and The Screen Actors' Guild.
Since then he barely stopped working with thirty feature films and dozens of TV appearances over the last two decades.
A sad loss.