The more complicated the character, the better I am. It's the one-dimensional crap that I had to do for years that drove me crazy.
— Martin Landau
Years ago on TV, I played people like Doc Holliday and Jesse James on Westerns.
Mankind, his brain has embraced so many amazing things, and yet we're still beating each other over the heads with clubs, excepting the bullets now, one bullet can wipe out an entire city.
With 'Avatar,' you're beginning to see the need for less and less actors and less of an appreciation for live acting.
If I were a writer, the Pulitzer Prize would be important to me. This is my profession, so an Oscar is important.
I don't think villains think they are villains.
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.
I'm usually cast by people who are oddly goofy.
I always say, if I tell you a joke right now and it's funny, you laugh. Now, we set the lights, and I tell you the joke again, it's hard to find it funny the second time.
I've worked with a lot of wooden actors in my day, but Pinocchio is the best.
All 'Hamlets' are different, and it's the most overwritten play ever written.
I don't like to sound immodest, but I believe in what I can do. Sometimes it's been frustrating because I haven't gotten to bat; if you're on the bench, and an unimaginative person doesn't see you as right for a certain role, you don't get the chance to hit the home run.
My father was an Austrian, and he brought some Torahs over to this country, ancient Torahs that were slipped out of Germany.
I did a picture called 'Lovely, Still' with Ellen Burstyn, We screened it to the AARP people in Las Vegas, 2000 of them. We got a standing ovation from people who couldn't stand.
For my generation of actors, it was about the theatre. Television didn't exist. Coaxial cable didn't exist.
I create each character as an individual, coming from a certain place, sounding a certain way, having been introduced to things a certain way.
As a young actor, I was working much more readily and being offered more things.
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.
In any age range, there are some limitations in terms of good, good parts.
The fact that I wound up doing television and film was just a thing that happened, but I was trained for the theater, and what goes on in the theater has nothing to do with special effects.
I was offered the Gene Hackman role in 'The Poseidon Adventure' four times, and I turned it down four times. I didn't want to do that movie. I called it the upside down boat.
The way a character sounds is so important to how you're going to play him.
As a Jew, there's a need to keep that atrocity alive. There were Catholics and gypsies and homosexuals who died in the Holocaust, too. It's amazing that people allowed this slaughter to take place. There's a need to make these films and reiterate it happened.
The idea of death is something that doesn't make sense to a lot of people. But to bring something back - or vampires who never die - is a logical fantasy for a human being.
I'm a big believer that an actor should be able to pick up any piece of material and act it, the way a good musician can.
To really have craft, you must be able to repeat something as one has to do in films.
All an audience wants to believe is that what's going on is happening for the first time.
A lot of the time with an independent production, you go onto the set, and you rehearse it in front of the crew, and at that point, the cinematographer takes over. You start accommodating the camera instead of the camera accommodating you.
I've always felt, pound for pound, I'm one of the best guys around; but you get stuck in people's eyes in a certain way, and it takes an imaginative director who will look at you and realize you can play different kinds of parts because you are an actor.
I love to see lack of clarity in a performance as well as clarity, as well as trust, as well as the kinds of things that human beings go through. I love to see spontaneity and 'inevitability.' How it gets there is going to shock the hell out of me, but it will get there somehow.
They made a fatal mistake in doing 'Psycho' again. Why do that? Why revisit something that stands for itself?
I studied with Strasberg, Elia Kazan. They raised the bar. They weren't easy to please, and they made you achieve the best you could do. That's what a teacher does: he infuses you with passion for something.
I like a character that is still alive and is necessarily thinking, and either grows or diminishes or whatever.
Ageism is something that does exist.
Actors need to trust themselves. If you trust yourself, you can trust others and leave the director outside.
I've got so many stories about every film and show I've ever been in.
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.
I look for roles where there is some kind of an arc to the story.
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.
I run the Actor's Studio on the West Coast, and one of the things I say all the time to the people I teach - many of whom are acting teachers - is that an actor needs to make choices that make him present.
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.
My best stuff as a teacher was always to find the problems within each individual actor, and I'll suggest things that I know that particular actor will have difficulty with.
My technique has always been to include all the periphery around me.
Every young actor wants to do 'Hamlet' on the West End. Why? Because they can bring something to it.
I've spent a lot of time playing roles that didn't really challenge me. I suppose every actor feels that way.
A lot of the bad guys I've played just haven't had much dimension to them.
When someone is there for you, has your back, that's somebody to pay attention to because that's a friend.
'Mission' was a mind game. The ideal mission was getting in and getting out without anyone ever knowing we were there.
Teachers are important in this world.
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.
