Martin Landau Quotes

An actor finds things in the moment with a director and other actors that you don't have time to hand-draw or animate with a computer.

I don't believe that you can give the same performance every take. It's physically impossible, so why bother? If you don't do what is happening at that moment, then it's not real. Then you're holding something back.

Any good director creates a playground. That's what they do. They hire the right actor, open the door and let them play because stuff will happen, right then and there. The audience wants to believe that what's going on is happening for the first time, ever. That's what acting is. That's what good scene writing is.

I never know what I'm going to say as I walk up to the microphone. I try to be in the moment. I try to go deeper into myself. I discover things on stage that I don't discover off stage about me.

I never want to play a show where it feels overly programmed, processed, and all that. For anybody that comes to one of our shows, the goal for me is to make sure that's their show. That nobody else is going to see that show ever again. You know what I mean? I try to make it different every day.

A so-called happy marriage corresponds to love as a correct poem to an improvised song.

You have to create the show anew, and find it anew, on a nightly basis.

Each show is a very honest portrayal of how I'm feeling that night. It can go off in any direction. The show is different every night, and that makes it much more exciting. Every evening is unique.

I think it's okay to have fun and show some character and some personality.

I like a performance, a live performance, so I like little mistakes because that's what makes perfect - the mistakes.

I am a natural actor. I try to keep it spontaneous as far as possible. That is my mantra.

To me, no matter who you're casting for what role, if something's authentic, usually you can mine something good there.

The very firstlings of my heart shall be The firstlings of my hand.

The first thing is to accept that theater is an unknown. If you go to a concert, you know the music. If you go to an art show, you can literally see the art on your phone before you see it in person. But with theater, often times people aren't prepared to take risks, even though that's exactly what's great about it.

The real you is still a little child who never grew up. Sometimes that little child comes out when you are having fun or playing, when you feel happy, when you are painting, or writing poetry, or playing the piano, or expressing yourself in some way. These are the happiest moments of your life - when the real you comes out, when you don't care about the past and you don't worry about the future. You are childlike.

I think whatever you believe in affects whatever you express, whatever you create. It shapes your morality in some way. But I don't think that's something that you have to shove down people's throats. I'd rather keep it in the background, and I'd rather people came to the music in an unprejudiced way. I'm glad, in a sense, that most people don't know about me, what I do, much. I'd rather they hear the music, and then say, "I wonder what kind of person created this."

As a director and an actor, I encourage improvisation but in character and in the moment of what it is.

I don't like answering to other people's philosophies. I don't have any philosophy, I just believe in stuff. Either I believe in something or I don't. Like, I believe in the Rolling Stones but not in the Dave Clark Five. There's nothing philosophic about it. Whenever I'm linked with a movement, it pisses me off.

I don't mind making a fool of myself. I felt like people would be accepting of that because, to me, that seems like an interesting way to do a show. I've always thought that it's interesting to watch people work things out on stage.

I love to make people laugh, and do things that are surprising and different.

I have to paint fast on television because of the limited time, but I don't want people to see what I'm showing them as work, something to worry and fret over. This is supposed to be fun.

Acting is the absence of acting. It's believing in the truth of the moment you are creating.

The most sophisticated people I've ever known had just one thing in common: they were all in touch with their inner children.

I do not correct my first imaginings by my second--well, yes, perhaps a word or so, but only to vary, not to delete. I want to represent the course of my humors and I want people to see each part at its birth.

I am very mistrustful of people who are constantly over intellectualising things. It kills passion. You have to allow yourself to lose control from time to time.