This file photo shows US actor Martin Landau kissing the Oscar he received for Best Supporting Role at the 67th annual Academy Awards in Los Angeles. — AFP photos

Veteran actor Martin Landau, whose versatile screen career stretched from the 1960s TV series "Mission: Impossible" to his Oscarwinning turn as Bela Lugosi in "Ed Wood," has died at 89, his publicist said Sunday. Brooklynborn Landau died Saturday of unexpected complications during a hospital stay in Los Angeles, according to a statement issued by publicist Dick Guttman. "We are overcome with sadness to report the death of iconic actor Martin Landau," said the statement.

"He had just celebrated his 89th birthday." Screenwriter Joss Whedon said Landau's turn as philandering eye doctor and brother of Jerry Orbach in Woody Allen's 1989 "Crimes and Misdemeanors" was "perfect." "RIP Martin Landau," he added on Twitter.

Landau got his start on Broadway in the 1950s, before a 1959 film debut in Alfred Hitchcock's classic thriller "North by Northwest." "I had tea with Mr Hitchcock one afternoon and asked him how he could have cast me in that part, because what I was playing in (the play) 'Middle of the Night' was so different," Landau told the Los Angeles Times last year. "'My dear Mah-tin,'" Landau said in impersonating the British filmmaker, "'you have a circus going on inside you. If you can do that part in the play, you can do this little trinket of mine.'" Landau's film roles ranged from the grand to the quirky, from "Cleopatra," to "The Greatest Story Ever Told" and "Nevada Smith."

That was before he met with massive success playing the master of disguise Rollin Hand in the "Mission: Impossible" TV series-in which his wife Barbara Bain also starred. He was nominated for three Emmys and a Golden Globe in 1968. Landau also starred alongside Bain in the 1970s in the British science fiction series "Space: 1999." The couple had two daughters together-actress and ballerina Juliet Landau and producer-director Susan Landau Finch-before divorcing in 1993.