Martin Landau, Oscar-Winning Film and TV Actor, Dies at 89

Martin Landau, the chameleon-like actor who received repute because the cunning master of disguise inside the Sixties television show "mission: not possible," then capped an extended and versatile profession with an Oscar for his poignant portrayal of growing older horror movie superstar Bela Lugosi in 1994's "Ed timber," has died. He was 89.

Landau died Saturday of sudden headaches for the duration of a quick live at UCLA clinical middle, his publicist Dick Guttman stated.

"task: impossible," which also starred Landau's wife, Barbara Bain, became a direct come across its debut in 1966. It remained on the air until 1973, but Landau and Bain left at the stop of the display's third season amid a economic dispute with the manufacturers. They starred within the British-made sci-fi series "area: 1999" from 1975 to 1977.

Landau could have been a movie star but for a function he didn't play — the sharp-eared starship business enterprise science officer, Mr. Spock. "megastar Trek" creator Gene Rodenberry had provided him the half-Vulcan, half of-human who tries to rid his lifestyles of all emotion. Landau became it down.

rather, he chose "challenge: not possible," and Leonard Nimoy went directly to eternal repute as Spock. paradoxically, Nimoy replaced Landau on "task: not possible."

After a brief however magnificent Broadway profession, Landau had made an auspicious movie debut within the overdue Nineteen Fifties, playing a soldier in "beef Chop Hill" and a villain in the Alfred Hitchcock traditional "North through Northwest."

He loved some distance less success after "task: not possible," but, finding he have been typecast as Rollin Hand, the pinnacle-secret task crew's cover wizard. His movie career languished for greater than a decade, attaining its nadir together with his look within the 1981 television film "The Harlem Globetrotters on Gilligan's Island."

He started out to discover redemption with a sympathetic role in "Tucker: the man and his Dream," the 1988 Francis Ford Coppola movie that garnered Landau his first Oscar nomination.

He became nominated again the following 12 months for his flip as the adulterous husband in Woody Allen's "Crimes and Misdemeanors."

His 0.33 nomination was for "Ed wood," director Tim Burton's affectionate tribute to a man extensively viewed as the worst Hollywood filmmaker of all time.

In "Ed wood," he portrayed Lugosi at some stage in his final years, whilst the Hungarian-born actor who had end up famous as matter Dracula turned into sick, hooked on capsules and forced to make movies with Ed wood simply to pay his payments.

Landau studied drawing at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn and worked for a time as a ny day by day news cartoonist before switching careers at age 22.

He had dabbled in performing earlier than the switch, making his stage debut in 1951 at a Maine summer season theater in "Detective tale" and rancid-Broadway in "first love."

In 1955, he turned into among hundreds who applied to look at at the prestigious Actors Studio and considered one of most effective decided on. the opposite was Steve McQueen.

Landau and Bain had daughters, Susan and Juliet. They divorced in 1993.