Landau earned Academy Award nominations for his performances in Tucker: The Man and His Dream (1988) and Woody Allen's Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989).

[12] While there, he trained under Lee Strasberg, Elia Kazan, and Harold Clurman, and eventually became an executive director with the Studio alongside Mark Rydell and Sydney Pollack.

We were two young would-be and still-yet-to-work unemployed actors, dreaming out loud and enjoying every moment ... We'd spend lots of time talking about the future, our craft and our chances of success in this newly different, ever-changing modern world we were living in.

Landau made his first major film appearance in Alfred Hitchcock's North by Northwest (1959) starring Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint.

The latter was an historical epic which cost a reported $20 million and featured performances from stars such as Charlton Heston, Max Von Sydow, Claude Rains, Dorothy McGuire, Jose Ferrer, Roddy McDowell, and Angela Lansbury.

The following year he played a ruthless killer in the Western action adventure prequel Nevada Smith (1966) starring Steve McQueen.

[13] Landau played the supporting role of master of disguise Rollin Hand in the first three seasons of the US television series Mission: Impossible, from 1966 to 1969, for which he received three straight Emmy nominations.

Landau at first declined to be contracted by the show because he did not want it to interfere with his film career; instead, he was credited for "special guest appearances" during the first season.

[17] He became a full-time cast member in the second season, although the studio agreed to Landau's request to contract him only on a year-by-year basis rather than the then-standard five years.

He was replaced by Leonard Nimoy, playing a very similar role but not exactly the same character, for the next two seasons of the series after Landau and Bain left the show.

In 1973, Landau guest-starred in the Columbo episode Double Shock alongside Peter Falk, as twin brothers involved in the murder of their rich uncle.

[20] He later wrote forewords to Space: 1999 co-star Barry Morse's theatrical memoir Remember with Advantages (2006) and Jim Smith's critical biography of Tim Burton.

[23] In the late 1980s, Landau made a career comeback, earning an Academy Award nomination for his role in Tucker: The Man and His Dream (1988).

Landau starred in the darker storyline as Judah Rosenthal, a successful ophthalmologist who tries to prevent his mistress, played by Anjelica Huston, from revealing their affair to his wife (Claire Bloom).

Landau's character confides his worries to patient and rabbi Sam Waterston as well as his mobster brother Jerry Orbach.

So of all the people who've ever read my lines, he makes them correct every time... One of the reasons for this must be that Martin Landau came from my neighborhood in Brooklyn, right near where I lived, only a few blocks away.

[25] Landau received an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor for this performance, losing to Denzel Washington in Glory.

[21] Landau's film roles in the 1990s included a down-on-his-luck Hollywood producer in the comedy Mistress (1992) with Robert De Niro, and judges in the dramas City Hall (1995) with Al Pacino, Rounders (1998) with Matt Damon,[19] B.A.P.S.

[30] In the early seasons of Without a Trace (2002–2009), Landau was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award for his portrayal of the Alzheimer's-afflicted father of FBI Special Agent in Charge Jack Malone, the series' lead character.

[21] In 2006, he made a guest appearance in the series Entourage as Bob Ryan, a washed-up but determined and sympathetic Hollywood producer attempting to relive his glory days, a portrayal that earned him a second Emmy nomination.

Landau appeared in the television film Have a Little Faith (2011) based on Mitch Albom's book of the same name, in which he played Rabbi Albert Lewis.

[33] On July 15, 2017, Landau died at age 89 at the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles; he had been briefly hospitalized.