page_title: Martin Landau
section_title: 1950s: Early roles, North by Northwest
hierarchical_section_title: Martin Landau / Career / 1950s: Early roles, North by Northwest
caption_attribution_description: Cropped screenshot of Cary Grant, James Mason, Eva Marie Saint and Martin Landau from the trailer for the film North by Northwest
context_page_description: Martin James Landau was an American actor, acting coach, producer, and editorial cartoonist. His career began in the 1950s, with early film appearances including a supporting role in Alfred Hitchcock's North by Northwest opposite Cary Grant. He played regular roles in the television series Mission: Impossible and Space: 1999.
  Landau received the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor – Motion Picture, as well as his first nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, for his role in Tucker: The Man and His Dream; he received his second Oscar nomination for his performance in Woody Allen's Crimes and Misdemeanors. His performance in the supporting role of Bela Lugosi in Ed Wood earned him an Academy Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award and a Golden Globe Award. He continued to perform in film and television, and headed the Hollywood branch of the Actors Studio until his death in July 2017.
context_section_description: Influenced by Charlie Chaplin and the escapism of the cinema, Landau pursued an acting career. He attended the Actors Studio, becoming good friends with James Dean. He recalled, "James Dean was my best friend. We were two young would-be and still-yet-to-work unemployed actors, dreaming out loud and enjoying every moment ... We'd spend lots of time talking about the future, our craft and our chances of success in this newly different, ever-changing modern world we were living in." He was also in the same class as Steve McQueen.
  In 1957, he made his Broadway debut in Middle of the Night. Landau made his first major film appearance in Alfred Hitchcock's North by Northwest (1959) as Leonard, the right-hand man of a criminal portrayed by James Mason. He had featured roles in two 1960s epics, Cleopatra (1963) and The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965), and played a ruthless killer in the Western action adventure prequel Nevada Smith (1965) starring Steve McQueen.
caption: Cary Grant, James Mason, Eva Marie Saint, and Landau in North by Northwest
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