Martin Landau applied to the prestigious The Actors Studio in 1955
and was one of two candidates out of 100 to be accepted. His classmate was Steve McQueen.
Arguably his most complex undertaking as a classically trained
actor was in Woody Allen’s Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989), where he expertly plays a moral, upstanding doctor, fraught
with guilt after he hires a hitman to kill his mistress (Angelica Houston) when
she threatens to tell his wife about the affair. He was Oscar-nominated for Best Supporting
Actor, but would end up winning five years later for his role in Ed Wood (1994), for his spot-on
portrayal of Bela Lugosi as the aging former horror movie actor-turned-junkie, relegated
to the parts he gets in Wood’s slapdash, B-movies.
In the opinion of the editors at Nitflix, he should really have
two Oscars and highly recommend Crimes
and Misdemeanors.
