Better To Live As Your Own Man

Than As A Fool In Someone Else's Dream

- Paul Mount

It’s not entirely unlikely that, to science fiction fans of a certain antiquity, the name Martin Landau will be forever associated with his starring role as the dynamic Commander John Koenig in two series of the 1970s Gerry Anderson adventure series Space: 1999. But this does a tremendous disservice to the life and achievements of an extraordinary, multifaceted actor whose career spanned the larger part of six decades on screen in both film and television, earning numerous Emmy Award nominations and, in 1995, an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his astonishing performance as Bela Lugosi in Tim Burton’s 1994 biopic Ed Wood.

Martin Landau, who passed away last month at the age of 89, was born in Brooklyn in 1928 and spent five years working for the New York Daily News before quitting to concentrate on his acting career. He attended New York’s famous Actors Studio (where a classmate was the late Steve McQueen and where he counted the legendary James Dean as his best friend) and made his first big screen appearance in Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest in 1959. During the early 1960s, he established his reputation in films such as Cleopatra (1963), The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965), and Nevada Smith (1965). With some reluctance, he took on the role of master of disguise Rollin Hand in the first three seasons of the hugely popular US TV series