Landau started acting in small roles in films and television shows such as The Goldbergs (1953) and Armstrong Circle Theatre (1956). His first major role was in the Alfred Hitchcock movie North by Northwest (1959) with Cary Grant. In 1966 he got the role of master of disguise Rollin Hand in the TV series Mission Impossible, along with his wife, Barbara Bain. He played that role for three years and earned a Golden Globe Award in 1968.
In 1975, Landau was hired for the British sci fi TV series Space: 1999, where he played Commander John Koenig. Barbara Bain was also in that series. Then Landau starred in movies such as Meteor (1979) with Sean Connery and The Fall of the House of Usher (1979) where he played Roderick Usher. In 1982 he returned to play an unbalanced character in Alone in the Dark, directed by Jack Sholder and starring Jack Palance and Donald Pleasence. In 1988, Landau was nominated for an Academy Award for his supporting role in Tucker: The Man and His Dream directed by Francis Ford Coppola, and then Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989) by Woody Allen.
He also won a Golden Globe for his role in Tucker: The Man and His Dream. In 1994, Martin Landau got a role in Ed Wood with Johnny Depp and directed by Tim Burton. In that movie, he played Bela Lugosi. He won an Academy Award and a Golden Globe in 1995 for that.
Landau appeared in TV series In Plain Sight (2009), The Simpsons (2011) and in the movies Ivory (2010) and Mysteria (2011).
