The movie life of Bryan Cranston: the abandonment of his parents, a key motorcycle trip and the day he felt his own daughter die

The actor met success at age 50 thanks to his role as Walter White in "Breaking Bad." He wanted to be a policeman in the midst of an existential crisis but in acting classes, he discovered that there were "the pretty girls"

"If your life is sane, that will allow you to go crazy at work." That's the advice Bryan Cranston has for young actors looking to break into the tough entertainment industry. Something that he knows perfectly. At 22, somewhat disoriented in his life with two absent parents, the actor went on a motorcycle trip. One night, lying in a sleeping bag, he read " Hedda Gabler", a play by the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen, and decided he wanted to become an actor. His first works as a performer were carried out in theatrical productions, before making the leap to television, the medium that gave him fame decades later.

The comedy "Malcolm in the Middle" made him a recognizable face, but it was his role as Walter White on the series "Breaking Bad" that triggered his career. That character changed his life forever. After a long way of making a place for himself in Hollywood, fame would knock on his door in his fifties. For this role, he won four Emmy Awards - three of them consecutively - for best actor in a drama.

Cranston is crazy about his job and takes it so seriously that he went through the step-by-step process of cooking meth. He is also convinced that his profession is therapeutic. Although it recognizes the "side b". “Show business has a special attraction to charlatans and phonies because it can be superficial. And empty”.

Cranston was on the verge of being a cop, until a motorcycle trip changed his mind

He is married to fellow actress Robin Dearden, whom he met on the set of the series "Airwolf" in 1984. He was playing the villain of the week, and she was his victim. They have a daughter named Taylor, who follows in their acting footsteps.

Since "Breaking Bad" ended, Cranston has worked in film, television and theater. He has also shown versatility and talent on the big screen in the film “Trumbo” (2015), a role for which he received his first Oscar nomination. His role as chairman Lyndon B. Johnson on "All the Way" made him a Tony winner as did his portrayal of Howard Beale in the Broadway production of "Network," based on the 1976 film of the same name. His latest television project is "Your Honor", where he plays a judge capable of doing anything to save his son. At 64, Cranston is enjoying more than well-deserved success, but he doesn't buy it.

Abandoned by his parents

He did not have an easy childhood in Los Angeles. His parents, little-known actors, divorced when he was just a child and left him in the care of his grandparents.

Bryan Cranston was destined to be an actor. And it is that his parents met in an acting class in Los Angeles. They fell in love and started a family with three children: Kyle, Bryan, and Amy. Cranston's mother, Audrey Peggy Sell, was a radio actress, while her father, Joe, landed a few mostly TV roles between 1953 and 1961.

The ill-fated passage through Hollywood of his parents turned the house into a true hell. When he was just 11 years old, Cranston's father left them for another woman and because he was frustrated with his stagnant career. And his mother began to break down, turned to alcohol to cope, and hit rock bottom. With no tools to take care of the family, he sent Cranston and his brother Kyle to their grandparents' farm. “She was hurt by the abandonment of her husband whom she loved. Then she became less and less reliable as a guide, ”the actor once recalled.

In an interview with the UK Sunday Times, the artist spoke about his tumultuous childhood due to the abandonment of his parents and how that has affected him throughout his life. “ My father chose not to be with us or to see us or to be a father. My mother chose to become an alcoholic and drown her sorrows, sadness, and resentment. She was like a ghost of herself. And nobody ever explained why he left”, he was honest.

In the midst of so much pain, the actor had to start earning a living from a very young age. He was a farmer, newspaper boy, and painter, among the many trades he took to pay the bills. Over time, Bryan managed to forgive them and reconnected with them, something for which he says he is grateful.

“He was very happy and felt tremendous guilt and sadness for his actions. It opened a little bit, not much, and I picked up what I could from its silence. There was too much gulf between us, but I accepted it and at some point I forgave it. I realized that he was fallible, like any human being ”, he said about the reunion with his father when he was 22 years old.

“I know it made me realize how tenuous life is. My father is not in my photos from 11 to 22. In many ways, he acted like my son and I like his father. He was often homeless, and I would lend him money, and you know, it wasn't the relationship you wanted, but it was the relationship that it was, ”he explained. That episode marked him in his role as a father. “I have a daughter, and I wouldn't think of abandoning her. The only way I would leave her is if she died."

Almost a cop, but he preferred his motorcycle

Cranston almost led a very different life: When he was younger, he wanted to become a police officer. In an interview with Route Magazine, he explained that he and his brother joined an organization called Police Explorer that allowed him to see places like Japan and Hawaii. “Since we were poor kids who grew up in a suburb of Los Angeles, I thought it was the only way I was going to get a chance to travel. So it wasn't that I was interested in police work, I was interested in going out and exploring, ”he said. “I knew the answers were somewhere. They weren't on my block or on the way from my house to my high school. "

He is also convinced that he was looking for a father figure that he never had. “ Looking back in hindsight, I think it was the pull of a strong male model. These grown men with authority who carried a gun and had a badge and strutted around them, and I thought, ' Wow, that's masculine. That's what a man is. "

After graduating first in his class from the program at age 16 and discovering he had "an aptitude for it," he planned to go to college and then join the Los Angeles Police Department. However, while he was a sophomore in college, he discovered acting classes and reevaluated his plans for a very specific reason. “ I took an acting class and realized that the girls were much prettier. I realized that I was ambivalent towards my future plans and didn't know what to do. " As we know, the performance won in the end.

Somewhat disoriented in his life he got a motorcycle trip through the United States with his older brother, in 1976, in the “Easy Rider” style. He packed everything up and left California with $ 117 in his pocket. He took any job to survive and ended up sleeping in homeless shelters. After that two-year trip, he knew that he wanted to make a living acting. He promised himself: " I will dedicate myself to something that I love and be good at, instead of doing something that I am good at but do not love ." But for that, he needed to heal old wounds and seek answers. That was when, together with his brother, he made the decision to go find his father.

The day he felt his daughter die

Cranston became "Walter White" in the cult series "Breaking Bad"

The scene is one of the strongest and most remembered of "Breaking Bad": Walter White enters the apartment of Jesse Pinkman, who sleeps next to his girlfriend, Jane, after a night of drugs and alcohol. Suddenly, she starts coughing. When she starts to vomit, he turns her on her back so she chokes and dies. A terrible event that turned into an opportunity. A moment that marked the passage from Walter White to Heisenberg, his alter ego. Cranston, like his character, was suddenly shocked. That's what viewers saw, but it didn't have to be.

“What came over me at that moment was a real fear, my worst fear. A fear that he had not fully anticipated or assumed. And my reaction is there, forever, at the end of the scene. I cover my mouth with my hand, horrified,” he recounted. He should have just coldly murdered her, watched, and left. A new Heisenberg crime. But the actor did not see actress Krysten Ritter at the time, but his own daughter, Taylor.

“The day I saw Jane die - the day I saw Taylor's face - that day I traveled to a place where I had never been. In that scene, he had given everything, absolutely everything. I was a murderer and capable of great love at the same time ”. It is one of the many confessions that Cranston makes in the book "Sequences of a life", where the interpreter recounts his effort over decades to become a star.

Years later, Cranston still recounted Jane's death as the strongest scene he had recorded in his career. Through tears, the actor admitted to journalist James Lipton of "Inside the Actor's Studio" that it was a very intense emotional work.

Both Cranston and Aaron Paul froze when they read the script for that chapter. "I had nightmares where I would wake up and see Jane's body there, dead next to me," Paul said in an interview with host Conan O'Brien in 2016.

"The only time we were called upon by an episode," Gilligan once acknowledged. "Or rather, the only time there was a little doubt." As the creator of "Breaking Bad" explained, the original idea was even stronger than the final version: Walter injects him with another dose of heroin to cause his death. “ You know, go big or go home. That was our motto. But I'm glad we didn't go in that direction because otherwise, we would all have gone home, " joked the director.

The cast of "Breaking Bad" at the Emmy Awards in 2013

In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Cranston also spoke about his decision to appear in the “ Breaking Bad” movie, titled “El Camino” (starring Aaron Paul and being forgotten), even though his schedule was full. . He stated that he wanted to support both the director and his former castmate. “Aaron and I say, if Vince starts asking a question, we just say, 'Look, the answer is yes, whatever you're going to ask. We'll do whatever. ' He changed our lives. So we are eternally grateful and happy to do so. "

Naturally, many fans are eagerly waiting to see if Walter White will appear during the final season of “Better Call Saul” which comes to an end this year after six seasons on the air. When asked by Time magazine about this, Cranston's response aligns with what he has said before: " If you call me today and ask me to be on the show, I would say yes before I finish the question."

From soap opera to established actor

Cranston with his wife Robin Dearden and daughter Taylor

He learned the business in the theater, where he met his first wife, Michelle Middleton. He starred in several commercials. To get the role of the guy in the Mars bar ad, where he had to climb a mountain, he paid for a climbing course, because he had no idea. And he achieves it. In the eighties and nineties, his roles in soap operas arrived. One-day jobs, doing bad because “those were the roles for the guest artists. If you were a series regular, you were a good guy, "he says. Divorced from his first wife, it was in one of these chapters that he met his second and current wife, Robin Dearden, whom he proposed to marry in a hot tub.

With the comedy "Malcolm in the Middle" (2000-2006) he achieved popularity. A slow but sure trajectory that led him to the most iconic role of his television career with "Breaking Bad ." The creator, Vince Gilligan, remembered him from his time in "The X Files." They called him in for a test. The producers were between Matthew Broderick and Steve Zahn, but Cranston had already fallen in love with the script and had Gilligan's support. He came up with a plan to avoid auditioning and it worked. Nobody now imagines another actor other than him in the skin of a man who goes from being a failure to become a synthetic drug lord.

The series was full of awards and the actor who came from the world of commercials and soap operas became a star. Today he is showered with offers to star in important projects, but he is far from relaxed. In each product - whether on stage or on a film set - he seeks to strive to improve every day in his work. "I always try to learn something," he says.

Cranston puts his family before everything else. He speaks lovingly of his wife and shows great admiration for his daughter, also turned actress. He is a man who knows what it is to be successful. His past has helped him to be who he is in the present. And he professes an infinite devotion to the art of acting. A profession that has been his great salvation.