Martin Landau continued...

OUTRÉ: And this thought process is the key to every good performance?

LANDAU: Yes. When you're acting, the audience really wants to believe that what they're watching is happening for the first time, as if it has never happened before, so that there's an unpredictability and yet an evitability ultimately. And a performance should be virtually seamless. You should not see any of the "work." That's really what it's about.

OUTRÉ: That's good acting as opposed to bad acting. But on a unconscious level, no one can be fooled.

LANDAU: I think you're right. Basically what we are embodying and delineating and expressing is what everyone in the world knows. As opposed to an opera singer or a ballet dancer, an actor is dealing with the same tools that everyone has. So, the audience will "connect" if it rings true to their own sensibilities. The palette we are painting with is the same as everyone else has. The only difference is that actors use it in a context and in a heightened condition, a dramatic form. If it is false, everyone in the audience will be aware of it--and I mean everyone. But if you hit the right note, everyone will say, "Yeah! I know that!" It's all quite empathetic.

OUTRÉ: Interestingly, Tim Burton started off as a graphic artist working at Disney and, prior to acting, you started off as an artist at the Pratt Institute.

LANDAU: I was a cartoonist. I studied fine arts, and worked at the New York Daily News. I did Billy Rosen's column "Pitching Horseshoes" Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.

OUTRÉ: Did you work on a comic strip as well?

LANDAU: Yes. I was Gus Edson's assistant on "The Gumps." I was seventeen years old and signed Gus's name as well as he could. I can still draw "The Gumps."

OUTRÉ: Do you sill draw?

LANDAU: I write a little more than I draw these days, but yes, I still do. I find it very relaxing. The whole world suddenly becomes a little rectangle. You also kind of let your mind roam; there's something wonderful about it.

OUTRÉ: What prompted you to pursue an acting career?

LANDAU: I think I always wanted to act. It's hard to look back and wonder why, but there was something that drove me to it.

I was still in high school when I got the job on the Daily News, then I went to Pratt and majored in art. But I left in the same way; one day I just stood up and asked if I could leave. They said that I just couldn't walk out, so I gave them two weeks notice. Then they asked me, "What are you doing? You don't have another job." And I said, "I'm going into the theatre," and they thought I was going to be an usher. They thought I'd be back there soon.

 OUTRÉ: Did you strike up any friendships with any of the other actors during your time at the Actors Studio?

LANDAU: Well, James Dean was my best friend, and Steve McQueen and I were accepted the same night out of the thousands that had applied. Steve and I wound up working together over the years. Jim died before I even left New York. We were both kids. We talked about acting a lot in the drugstores on rainy days, and we would go around trying to get work. Jack Lemmon, Rod Steiger-all these people were part of the New York theatre scene. Rod and I have known each other since the days he did the original "Marty" on television.

OUTRÉ: Didn't Jack Nicholson study with you?

LANDAU: Jack Nicholson studied with me in my workshop for three years-Jack, Warren Oates, Oliver Stone. Before Oliver directed his first movie, he worked with me as an actor so he would understand what that was about. My former agent, who was then the head of the [Actors] Alliance, asked me if Oliver could come into my workshop. I said, "Yes, if he could come in as an actor." So he and his girlfriend, who later became his wife, came in together and worked with me for six months. Then he went out and directed his first movie.

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