Martin Landau Quotes

Trying to get somebody to read your script and you're a musician? That's the last person whose script you're gonna read!

You need names to get the movie made.

Casting directors tend to be the unsung heroes in this business.

An established film director can just pick up the phone and say to a star, 'Hey, are you interested in doing a commercial?'

It's very difficult in France to get access to castings when you don't have any relationships.

I do get a fair amount of scripts; I got 'Frozen River' kinda just that way. I have a hard time turning my back on anybody who says they have something for me.

Anytime you cast a movie and you need someone famous in the lead part, you're a prisoner of whoever happens to be famous in the six-month window in which you're trying to get a film financed.

It's easier to get an actor when you just ask them to do a day on something rather than have them come in, audition, get picked.

I graduated from the University of Oklahoma, and I got the opportunity to take some on-camera classes while I was in school and met a casting director who informed me quite a bit before my move out to L.A.; it made L.A. feel possible, coming from Oklahoma and not having a family that was in the industry.

Ultimately, making movies is a really, really small world. Being on sets and going to the same locations, like shooting in Shreveport, you're always working with somebody from another set that you worked with.

Because actors don't get to pick movies; movies pick the actors.

I was a Valley girl; I hung out, and through a photographer friend. I met Peter Douglas, who was one of Kirk Douglas's kids. He introduced me to Sam Spiegel.

One of the first things that I did was, I got myself a publicist as soon as 'Maria Full of Grace' premiered in July, so that I could go and meet people that I wanted to meet: the writers and the directors and the people that are doing things.

Every week, I take two phone calls or meetings with an aspiring producer or director.

'Hanna' was nice. It was Saoirse Ronan's idea. Usually, the director casts the actor, but in this case, the actor cast the director.

When I came to Hollywood, I would take the opportunity to get to know George Stevens or Willy Wyler or Billy Wilder or Freddie Zinnemann. David Lean I got to know, of course, in London. And David Selznick and Darryl Zanuck, not to mention Jack Warner, and Sam Goldwyn was actually very, very nice to me.

I've always believed that it's the film that chooses the actor and not the other way round.

I think that's the problem, when you're a young filmmaker and you're starting out, you don't know people, you're easily lead, you don't know the right people to talk to, you really need guides.

If you work with a big director, access to stars becomes easier.

No one works with an actor or a director for friendship.

You will not find outsiders getting main, important roles in big films. The difficult part is to meet the right people.

I was fortunate to work with some of the talented filmmakers of our industry. In addition, one film leads to another. As a newcomer, I explored those opportunities.

Sometimes casting falls in place easily and sometimes it takes a while. Fifty per cent of my job is done when I get the right actors.

When you go and you tell a studio and that it's an ensemble, that doesn't mean a lot to them. But, my hats off to Paramount and Warner Brothers, because when we told them that these were the kinds of people that we want to get, across the board, they were unbelieveably enthusiastic about it.

People often call and say: "Can you help me to get Bill Murray in our movie." But I'm always like, "well I don't know how to do that!" I've sometimes tried and not been able to get him but then I'll suddenly be very surprised by the thing that he will suddenly decide to do.