Martin Landau obituary

Martin Landau obituary

Actor who played Rollin Hand in the US television series Mission: Impossible and Bela Lugosi in the 1994 film Ed Wood

Monday 17 July 2017 12.32 BST Last modified on Monday 17 July 2017 13.03 BST
In the first three series of the television show Mission: Impossible (1966-69), Martin Landau, who has died aged 89, played the ace impersonator Rollin Hand, one of the specialists used by the Impossible Missions Force. Hand was described as a “man of a million faces”. Landau’s own face was instantly recognisable, with its haunted eyes, wide mouth and furrowed brow; even when he broke into a smile, he could seem to be frowning.

Landau was disguised beneath heavy makeup for his best known film role, as the horror actor Bela Lugosi in Ed Wood (1994), Tim Burton’s biopic of the cross-dressing director of trashy movies. Landau’s Lugosi is a tragicomic creation: his wife has left him, he is addicted to morphine and most of Hollywood thinks he is dead. “This business, this town,” he sighs, “it chews you up and then spits you out. I’m just an ex-bogeyman.”


https://www.theguardian.com/film/2017/jul/17/martin-landau-obituary