Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
The Schmooze

RIP Martin Landau, Jewish Actor Of ‘Mission Impossible’ Fame

Martin Landau, of “Mission Impossible” fame, died on Saturday of “unexpected complications” at the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles. He was 89 years old.

Landau was the recipient of several Emmy nominations and a Golden Globe award for his work on the television series “Mission Impossible”. He also received a Best Supporting Actor academy award for starring alongside Johnny Depp in “Ed Wood”.

Landau was born in Brooklyn in 1928 to Jewish parents. His father, an Austrian immigrant, was involved in attempting to rescue relatives from the Nazis when Landau was young. He worked for five years as an editorial cartoonist at the New York Daily News before quitting to pursue theater full time.

Landau’s last appearance onscreen was as a rabbi in the 2011 film “Have a Little Faith.”

RIP, Martin.

Becky Scott is the editor of The Schmooze. Follow her on Twitter, @arr_scott

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

With your support, we’ll be ready for whatever 2025 brings.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.