Martin Landau, the actor who won Oscar for ‘Ed Wood,’ is no more

Martin Landau, the Oscar-winning actor who appeared in films like Alfred Hitchcock’s “North by Northwest” as well as in the television series of the “Mission: Impossible” in the 1960s, has died. He died on 15 July 2017. He was 89.

He died at UCLA Medical Center due to unexpected complications during a short hospitalisation. His death was confirmed by his publicist.

He won his Academy Award (Oscars) for his poignant portrayal of washed-up Bela Lugosi in 1994’s Tim Burton’s Ed Wood.

Who was Martin Landau?

• Born on 20 June 1928, was an American film and television actor.

• He began his career as a newspaperman at age of 17 at the New York Daily News as a staff cartoonist and illustrator. At that time, he was studying at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn.

• After five years at the News, Landau suddenly quit to try his hand at acting. His film career began in 1950s, with appearances as a supporting role in North by Northwest in 1959.

• Besides, he played regular roles in television series Mission Impossible, which garnered a Golden Globe award and several nominations for Emmy Awards.

• He continued to perform in film and television, and headed the Hollywood branch of the Actors Studio until his death in 2017.

Films and Television

Landau starred in several films as well as Television series. Few of them were:

• Films: North by Northwest (1959), Cleopatra (1963), The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965), Nevada Smith (1965), Tucker: The Man and His Dream (1988), Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989), Mistress (1992), Ed Wood (1994), City Hall (1995) Rounders (1998) and The Majestic (2001) among others.

• Television Series: Mission: Impossible, Space: 1999 (a British science-fiction series), and The Harlem Globetrotters on Gilligan's Island (1981), Without a Trace (2002–2009), Entourage (2006) among others.  
In 1994 Spider-Man TV series, Martin Landau provided the voice of Scorpion for the first two seasons where the later seasons have the role recast to Richard Moll.

Nominations for Oscars/the Academy Awards

• His first nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in 1988 for his role in Tucker: The Man and His Dream.

• He received his second Oscar nomination for his appearance in Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989).

• His performance in the supporting role of Bela Lugosi in Ed Wood (1994) earned him an Academy Award. The film also won a Screen Actors Guild Award and a Golden Globe Award.