The 100 Greatest Brooklynites of All Time: 90 to 81
Though he’s settled now out in West Hollywood, where he runs the local branch of the Actors Studio, Landau was born right here in Brooklyn in 1928; he went to Madison for high school (which has turned out several Nobel prize winners, U.S. senators and a Supreme Court justice) and then enrolled in Pratt, where he studied while working as a cartoonist for the Daily News. But by 22 he quit the doodling business and began an acting career; early parts include a supporting appearance in North by Northwest and the master of disguise on the TV series Mission: Impossible. But of course you know him for his two greatest roles, later in his career: the philandering, uxoricidal ophthalmologist in Woody Allen’s Crimes and Misdemeanors, for which he was nominated for an Oscar; and the morphine-addicted Bela Lugosi in Tim Burton’s Ed Wood, for which he won.