Breaking Bad Wiki
Register
Advertisement
Breaking Bad Wiki

"In order to be an actor you really have to be one of those types of people who are risk-takers and have what is considered an actor's arrogance, which is not to say an arrogance in your personal life. But you have to be the type of person who wants the ball with seconds left in the game."
―Bryan Cranston[src]


Bryan Lee Cranston is an American actor, filmmaker, and director. He is best known for his portrayal of chemistry teacher and drug kingpin Walter White in Breaking Bad. His role as Walt in Breaking Bad won him three consecutive Emmys for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series. He is also well known for his role as Hal Wilkerson in Malcolm in the Middle.

Cranston's performance on Breaking Bad earned him the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series four times (2008, 2009, 2010, and 2014). After becoming a producer of the show in 2011, he also won the award for Outstanding Drama Series twice. Breaking Bad also earned Cranston five Golden Globe nominations (with one win) and nine Screen Actors Guild Award nominations (with four wins). He was previously nominated three times for the Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series for his role in Malcolm in the Middle.

Aside from his successful career as an actor, Cranston is also a director, writer and producer. He wrote, directed, and produced the film Last Chance, and has directed episodes of Malcolm in the Middle and Breaking Bad. Cranston reprised his role as Walt in El Camino, and in the sixth and final season of Better Call Saul.

History[]

Cranston was born in Hollywood, Los Angeles. He was raised in Canoga Park, Los Angeles, and went to community college to study police science. He got his start in acting in the theatre, and soon began doing commercial and TV work. His first big role was a 9-episode recurring spot on the TV series Raising Miranda as Uncle Russell. He continued to hold small television and film roles, including a recurring spot on Seinfeld as a dentist.

In 1998, Cranston played Patrick Crump, the lead antagonist of the episode "Drive" of The X-Files. In the episode, the anti-Semitic Crump forces Agent Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) to drive him west, supposedly to escape an ultrasonic signal that is slowly driving him insane and will eventually kill him. "Drive" was written by Vince Gilligan, who at that time was an executive producer on The X-Files. Gilligan said later that Cranston's performance as Crump - an unlikable person who nevertheless succeeds in gaining the audience's sympathy, but becomes less and less sympathetic as the episode goes on - was pivotal in Gilligan's decision to cast Cranston as Walter White, when Gilligan created Breaking Bad. In 2000, Cranston landed a leading role as Hal on the comedy series Malcolm in the Middle. He remained with the show until its end in 2006. Cranston ultimately directed several episodes of the show and received three Primetime Emmy Award nominations for his performance.

Walter White 5A Promotional Image

Walter White, Cranston's most famous role in television.

From 2008 to 2013, Cranston starred in the AMC series Breaking Bad, created by Vince Gilligan, in which he played Walter White, a high-school chemistry teacher who is diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. Walter teams up with former student Jesse Pinkman (played by Aaron Paul), to manufacture and sell methamphetamine to ensure the well-being of Walter's family after he dies. The producers of Breaking Bad were initially skeptical about Vince Gilligan's choice to cast Cranston as Walt, since they associated Cranston with his comedic role as Hal, but changed their minds after Gilligan showed them Cranston's scenes from The X-Files.

Cranston's work on the series was met with widespread critical acclaim, winning him the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series in each of the show's first three seasons and being nominated in 2012 and 2013 for seasons four and five (winning again in 2014 for the second half of season 5). Cranston was also a producer for the fourth and fifth seasons of the series, and directed three episodes of the show during its run. He is set to reprise the role of Walt during the final season of the spin-off series Better Call Saul, having previously reprised the role in the 2019 film El Camino, appearing in a flashback scene. For Walt's appearance in El Camino, Cranston couldn't shave his head nor grow a moustache for his appearance in Jesse's flashback due to acting issues. He instead opted to wear a bald cap enhanced with CGI, along with face facial fuzz for his moustache.[1]

Bryan_Cranston_interview_for_Breaking_Bad_season_3_at_the_Paleyfest_TV_Festival

Bryan Cranston interview for Breaking Bad season 3 at the Paleyfest TV Festival

Bryan Cranston interview

Cranston's performance on Breaking Bad earned him the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series four times (2008, 2009, 2010, and 2014). After becoming a producer of the show in 2011, he also won the award for Outstanding Drama Series twice. Breaking Bad also earned Cranston five Golden Globe nominations (with one win) and nine Screen Actors Guild Award nominations (with four wins). He was previously nominated three times for the Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series for his role in Malcolm in the Middle. Cranston co-developed and occasionally appeared in the crime drama series Sneaky Pete (2015–2019) and served as a director for episodes of Malcolm in the Middle, Breaking Bad, Modern Family, and The Office.

In 2014, Cranston earned a Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play for his portrayal of President Lyndon B. Johnson in the Broadway play All the Way, a role he reprised in the HBO 2016 television film of the same name. In 2018, he received the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actor in a Play for his portrayal of Howard Beale in the play Network at London's National Theatre, later winning his second Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play for the same role on Broadway. For portraying Dalton Trumbo in the film Trumbo (2015), he received nominations for an Academy Award, a BAFTA Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award and a Golden Globe Award, all for Best Actor in a Leading Role.

Cranston has appeared in several other films, such as Saving Private Ryan (1998), Little Miss Sunshine (2006), Drive (2011), Argo (2012), Godzilla (2014), The Upside and Power Rangers (both 2017). He also provided voice acting in the films Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted (2012), Kung Fu Panda 3 (2016), and Isle of Dogs (2018).

Appearances[]

Breaking Bad[]

Episodes 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13
Season 1
Season 2
Season 3
Season 4
Season 5A
Season 5B

Better Call Saul[]

Episodes 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13
Season 1
Season 2
Season 3
Season 4
Season 5
Season 6

Breaking Bad credits[]

Director[]

Episodes 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13
Season 1
Season 2
Season 3
Season 4
Season 5A
Season 5B

Producer[]

Trivia[]

  • Cranston has claimed that he based his portrayal of Walter White on his own father, who had a slumped posture "like the weight of the world was on his shoulders".
  • Cranston was paid $225,000 per episode in both parts of season 5.[2]
  • On the set of the final 8 episodes, Cranston called the final 8 episodes "A roller-coaster ride to hell" and stated "You won't wanna miss this".
  • In the episode "Rabid Dog", Walt asks Patrick Kuby about his search for Jesse, and Kuby tells him, "I put a bug in the Mayhew tall kid's mom's place. For three hours straight all he kept talking about was something called Babylon 5." Cranston had a small part in that show as Ranger Captain Ericsson in the episode "The Long Night."
  • Before the series finale of Breaking Bad aired, Cranston released a joke alternate ending where his Malcolm in the Middle character, Hal, wakes up and all the events of the show are just a dream. This plot device has been used in Lost, Newhart, The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson and Dallas.
    • It has also been an online joke among fans of Breaking Bad for years, that the events of the series were simply a dream of Hal's or that Hal was the assumed identity of Walter White in the Witness Protection Program.[3]
  • Cranston has frequently said that his stardom and the amount of subsequent film and television work he has been offered would not have happened had he not had the chance to appear in Breaking Bad; to commemorate this, he has the chemical symbols for bromine (Br) and barium (Ba) tattooed on the inside part of his right wedding ring finger that is in the same style as they appear in the show's title logo.
  • According to the Breaking Bad Insider Podcast, Cranston plays one of the party guests in "Thirty-Eight Snub", with a wig and different beard/glasses. This would make him one of the only actors playing multiple characters in Breaking Bad.
    • Simon Drobik plays three separate police officers in Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul, and El Camino.
    • Christopher Dempsey plays three seemingly different medical professionals in Breaking Bad.
  • Cranston's wife and daughter, Robin Dearden and Taylor Dearden, appear in Season 3 episode "No Más" of Season 3 of Breaking Bad.
  • Cranston and Paul appeared together in the sixteenth season of It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia in the episode "Celebrity Booze: The Ultimate Cash Grab", with their cameos being a sort of role reversal of Walter and Jesse's character dynamic in Breaking Bad.


External links[]

Notes[]

Emmy Award videos[]

Advertisement