A gaunt, mercurial character player with large eyes, a full upper lip and a dour, saturnine expression, Martin Landau worked for five years as an assistant cartoonist for newspapers in his native New York beginning at age 17, but he caught the acting bug performing in regional and off-Broadway theater and auditioned for the Actors Studio in 1955. Early television drama, too, was treating the actor well at this time, giving him plenty of work on such anthology series as "Kraft Theater,” "Omnibus,” Playhouse 90" and "Studio One.” Landau's supporting turn as a lout in the Broadway production of "Middle of the Night" in 1957 garnered him particular praise, and his stint with the touring company brought him out to the West Coast.
Born in Brooklyn, NY on June 20, 1931, Landau's career in features got off to an auspicious start: His second film was Alfred Hitchcock's much-loved suspense thriller, "North by Northwest" (1959), in which Landau played Leonard, one of the film's more prominent—and covertly gay—villains. The lengthy shoot of the legendary bomb "Cleopatra" (1963) prevented Landau from working with Federico Fellini on "8 1/2" (1963), but he did fine TV work in sympathetic roles on "The Outer Limits" and made a memorably evil Caiaphas in George Stevens' reverential biopic of Jesus, "The Greatest Story Ever Told" (1965). Although Landau has generally been cast as villains or as serious and often morose types, his versatility found itself a good showcase in what would come to be one of his best-remembered parts, that of master-of-disguise Rollin Hand on the CBS spy series, "Mission: Impossible.”
Landau was then married to actor Barbara Bain, who also starred in "Mission,” and, after three seasons, the two of them left the series in 1969 after a contract dispute. The series successfully ran on for several more seasons, but the acting couple found times a bit tougher. Landau acted in several features, TV-movies and series pilots (e.g., "Savage" 1973,) and in the mid-70s, the couple moved to England to star in a syndicated TV sci-fi series, "Space: 1999" (1975-77). Although the series was well-acted and had its merits, it failed to sustain itself, and the pensive, slightly worried-looking Landau was not quite standard adventure hero material. After the program folded, Landau, handicapped by his previous villain roles and TV fame, kept busy but was hardly challenged by a decade of forgettable roles in films like "Meteor" (1979), "The Being" (1983) and "Cyclone" (1987) and reached a nadir with the TV-movie, "The Harlem Globetrotters on Gilligan's Island" (NBC, 1981).
Landau's career revival began with his role as Abe Karatz, the sympathetic money man in Francis Ford Coppola's intriguing "Tucker: The Man and His Dream" (1988), which netted him a first supporting Oscar nomination. He scored a second Oscar nod with his splendid work as a morally troubled eye doctor who, with the help of his brother (the well-cast Jerry Orbach), plots a murder in Woody Allen's "Crimes and Misdemeanors" (1989). Landau has continued enjoying his renaissance with fine roles in TV-movies including "Max and Helen" (TNT, 1990) and "Legacy of Lies" (USA Network, 1992). He received some of the finest notices of his uneven but distinguished career as well as a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his touching, hilarious and uncanny portrayal of faded film star Bela Lugosi in Tim Burton's affectionate feature biopic, "Ed Wood" (1994). Since then, he has remained in demand, playing a wide range of characters including an honest judge in the political corruption drama "City Hall" and a restrained turn as the woodcarver Geppetto in a live-action version of "The Adventures of Pinocchio" (both 1996). The comedy "B.A.P.S" (1997) cast him as a wealthy man who takes two waitresses with big dreams (Halle Berry and Natalie Desselle) under his wing, while in the feature version of the TV show "The X-Files" (1998), Landau offered an incisive cameo as a conspiracy theorist offering assistance to FBI agents. He followed with turns as the mentor to Matt Damon's card sharp in "Rounders" (also 1998) and as Matthew McConaughy's wheelchair-bound stepfather in Ron Howard's "EDtv" (1999). Landau also portrayed the titular figure in his advanced years in the 1999 Showtime miniseries "Bonanno: A Godfather's Story.”
Turning to classics of myth and legend, Landau next took the role of Geppetto in "The New Adventures of Pinocchio" (1999) and reunited with Tim Burton for an uncredited cameo in "Sleepy Hollow" (1999). The veteran actor then slummed a bit into the dumbed-down wrestling comedy "Ready to Rumble" (2000), the cool crime indie "Very Mean Men" (2000) and the barely-seen "King Lear"-inspired boxing drama "Shiner" opposite another notorious slummer, Michael Caine. Landau found better roles in the TV miniseries "In the Beginning" (2000), playing the Biblical Abraham, and director Frank Darabont's earnest, if not-quite-Capraesque effort "The Majestic" (2000) opposite Jim Carrey. He also appeared in a small role in the action-comedy "Hollywood Homicide" (2003) with Harrison Ford and Josh Hartnett. After a two-decades absence from the small screen, Landau returned with a recurring role on the hit crime drama, “Without A Trace” (CBS, 2002- ), playing Jack Malone’s (Anthony LaPaglia) dying, Alzheimer’s-ridden father.
Returning to the feature world, he starred in the World War II drama, “The Aryan Couple” (2005), playing a wealthy Jewish man who, along with his wife (Judy Parfitt), is granted immunity from the death camps if he allows the Nazis to confiscate everything he owns. As a requisite for safe passage, however, the elderly couple must dine with both Heinrich Himmler and Adolph Eichmann. In 2006, Landau made his first foray into regular series work since “Space: 1999” as the head of forensics in “The Evidence” (ABC, 2005-2006), a run-of-the-mill procedural about two homicide detectives (Orlando Jones and Rob Estes) piecing together seemingly disparate clues to solve a crime. Landau next appeared in a three-show arc during the third season of the popular HBO series, “Entourage” (2004- ), giving a hilarious performance as a thinly-veiled caricature of infamous producer Robert Evans. Evans gave the producers of “Entourage” the okay to film at his extravagant Beverly Hills mansion, but was later miffed with Landau’s characterization of him as an old, bumbling wash-up who constantly uttered the amusing tagline, “Is that something you might be interested in?” Executives from HBO countered by saying there was no intention to mock Evans. Intentional or not, Landau’s comedic turn was wildly entertaining and earned the actor an Emmy nod for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Comedy Series.