Bryan Lee Cranston was born in Hollywood, Los Angeles,[5][6] on March 7, 1956,[7] the second of three children born to Annalisa "Peggy" (née Sell), a radio actress, and Joseph Cranston, an actor and former amateur boxer.[8][9] His father was of half Irish, quarter Austrian Jewish, and quarter German descent, while his mother was the daughter of German immigrants.[10][11][12] He has an older brother, Kyle, and a younger sister, Amy. Cranston was raised in Canoga Park, Los Angeles.[2][13][14] His father held many jobs before deciding to become an actor, but did not secure enough roles to provide for his family. He eventually walked out on the family when Cranston was 11 years old, and they did not see each other again until a 22-year-old Cranston and his brother Kyle decided to track him down.[8] Cranston later starred in a film directed by his father entitled The Big Turnaround in 1988.[15] He then maintained a relationship with his father until the latter's death in 2014.[16]
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".[8] After his father left, he was raised partly by his maternal grandparents[17][18] and lived on their poultry farm in Yucaipa, California. He has called his parents "broken people" who were "incapacitated as far as parenting" and caused the family to lose their house in a foreclosure.[18] In 1968, when he was 12 years old, he encountered Charles Manson while riding horses with his cousin at the Spahn Ranch.[19] This happened about a year before Manson ordered the Tate-LaBianca murders.[20] Cranston graduated from Canoga Park High School, where he was a member of the school's chemistry club,[21] and earned an associate degree in police science from Los Angeles Valley College in 1976.[22] While at Los Angeles Valley College he took an acting class for an elective, which inspired him to pursue a career in acting, saying "And at 19 years old, all of a sudden, my life changed."[23]
After college, Cranston began his acting career in local and regional theaters, getting his start at the Granada Theater in the San Fernando Valley. He had performed as a youth, but his show-business parents had mixed feelings about their son being involved in the profession, so he did not act until years later.[9] Cranston was ordained as a minister when he was 19 by the Universal Life Church, and performed weddings for $150 a service to help with his income on Catalina Island, where he spent his summers working.[24][25][26] He also worked as a waiter, night-shift security guard at the gates of a private LA community, truck loader, camera operator for a video dating service, and a CCTV security guard at a supermarket.[27]
Cranston started working regularly in the late 1980s, mostly doing minor roles and advertisements.[28] He was an original cast member of the ABC soap opera Loving, where he played Douglas Donovan from 1983 to 1985.[9] Cranston starred in the short-lived series Raising Miranda in 1988. Cranston played Tom Logan in an episode of the first season of the TV series Baywatch in 1989. Cranston's voice acting includes English dubbing of Japanese anime (for which he primarily used the non-unionpseudonym Lee Stone),[29] including Macross Plus and Armitage III: Poly-Matrix, and most notably, Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie as Fei-Long, and the children's series Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. Cranston did voice work for the 1993–94 first season of that series, playing characters such as Twin Man and Snizzard, for which he was paid about $50 an hour for two or three hours of daily work. The Blue Power Ranger, Billy Cranston, was thought to be named for him but this has since proven false.[30][31][32]
1994–2006: Breakthrough and Malcolm in the Middle
In 1994, Cranston got the recurring role of Dr. Tim Whatley, Jerry's dentist, on Seinfeld. He played the role until 1997. In 1996, he played the first of his two biographical roles as an astronaut when he portrayed Gus Grissom in the film That Thing You Do!. In 1997, he played a supporting role in the Michael Dudikoff action film Strategic Command, alongside Richard Norton, Paul Winfield, and Stephen Quadros.[33] Later that year he had a small role in Babylon 5 as Ericsson, a starship captain who sacrifices himself as part of a plan to save the galaxy.
He has had guest roles in many television series, including a white-collar criminal searching for his estranged wife and daughter on The Flash, and a lawyer attempting to free the title character from a contract in Sabrina the Teenage Witch. He also had a guest role in late 2006 on the CBS sitcom How I Met Your Mother, playing Ted Mosby's obnoxious co-worker and former boss Hammond Druthers. He played Lucifer in the ABC Family miniseries Fallen and appeared as Nick Wrigley, an irresponsible uncle who accidentally brings Christmas close to destruction when he steals Santa's sleigh to have a crazy ride, in the 2001 Disney Channel Original Movie 'Twas the Night. In that same year, he provided the voice of Gary's father in Gary & Mike. He appeared as the more successful business colleague of Greg Kinnear's character in the film Little Miss Sunshine (2006). In September 2008, Cranston narrated a pre-teen adventure/fantasy audiobook called Adventures with Kazmir the Flying Camel.[38]
From 2008 to 2013, Cranston starred in the AMC series Breaking Bad, created by Vince Gilligan, in which he played the show's protagonist, Walter White, a high-school chemistry teacher who is diagnosed with terminallung cancer. Walter teams up with former student Jesse Pinkman (played by Aaron Paul), to manufacture and sell methamphetamine to ensure the financial well-being of Walter's family after he dies. 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 and Bill Cosby are the only actors to have won the award three consecutive times.[2] Cranston was also a producer for the fourth and fifth seasons of the series, and directed three episodes of the show during its run.
Cranston at the All the Way premiere at the LBJ Library, Austin in 2016
From September 2013 to June 2014, Cranston played U.S. president Lyndon B. Johnson in the American Repertory Theater and Broadway productions of All the Way. The play depicted President Johnson's efforts to maneuver members of the 88th United States Congress to enact, and civil rights leaders including Martin Luther King Jr. to support, the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The performance has received widespread acclaim with Charles Isherwood of The New York Times writing, "Mr. Cranston strides onto the Broadway stage with an admirable confidence, meeting the challenge of animating Mr. Schenkkan’s sprawling civics lesson as if he’s thoroughly at home...Mr. Cranston’s heat-generating performance galvanizes the production".[42] He went on to win the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play for the role.[43][44][45]
He also played scientist Joe Brody in the 2014 reboot of Godzilla.[46] From 2015 to 2019 he played Vince Lonigan in the Amazon Prime Video series Sneaky Pete. Cranston also served as a co-creator, writer and executive producer on the project.[47]
Cranston has produced an instructional DVD called KidSmartz, which is designed to teach families how to stay safe from child abductors and Internet predators. KidSmartz raises money for the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children by donating half the proceeds from sales. Also, following the success of Breaking Bad, the year 2014 saw reports of Cranston developing new TV projects in collaboration with Sony Pictures Television.[48] In 2016, it was announced that he would star in an episode of the Channel 4/Amazon Video series Philip K. Dick's Electric Dreams, and would also serve as an executive producer on the series.[49][50]
In 2020, he starred as the lead human, Mack, in the Disney film The One and Only Ivan. From 2020 to 2023 he had the lead role in the miniseries Your Honor, playing a judge and the father of a boy who accidentally kills someone. In 2022, Cranston reprised the role of Walter White during the final season of the Breaking Bad prequel series Better Call Saul.[71] In 2023, Cranston had another appearance as Walter White, alongside Aaron Paul's Jesse, and Raymond Cruz as Tuco Salamanca in a Super Bowl LVII commercial for PopCorners. He has stated this could be his final appearance as the character.[72][73]
From 1977 to 1982, Cranston was married to writer Mickey Middleton.[77] On July 8, 1989,[78] he married Robin Dearden whom he had met on the set of the series Airwolf in 1984; he was playing the villain of the week and she played a hostage he held at gunpoint. Both Dearden and her daughter with Cranston, actress Taylor Dearden, (b. February 12, 1993)[79] appeared in the Breaking Bad episode "No Más", directed by Cranston.[80]
Cranston played baseball when he was a student and remains a collector of baseball memorabilia.[9] His collection includes pennants, signed cards and jerseys. A notable item in his collection is an Atlanta Braves jersey signed by numerous players in the 500 home run club.[81] He is an avid fan of both the Los Angeles Dodgers[82] and the Los Angeles Rams.[83] During the 2022 MLB Celebrity Softball Game, Cranston was the first celebrity to be ejected after being struck by a pitch and jokingly throwing a bucket of bubble gum at an umpire.[84]
Cranston and castmate Aaron Paul both got Breaking Bad tattoos on the last day of filming to commemorate the final episode of Breaking Bad; Cranston's tattoo consists of the show's logo on his right ring finger, while Paul's tattoo consists of "no half measures" on his biceps.[89]
Cranston and Breaking Bad co-star Aaron Paul announced the release of their signature mezcal, Dos Hombres, in July 2019.[90]
Cranston supported Hillary Clinton in the 2016 United States presidential election and opposed the candidacy of Donald Trump. However, upon Trump becoming president, Cranston expressed disappointment with those who hoped Trump would fail: "President Trump is not the person who I wanted to be in that office, and I've been very open about that. That being said, he is the president. If he fails, the country is in jeopardy. It would be egotistical for anyone to say, 'I hope he fails.' To that person I would say, fuck you."[94]
^Cranston, Bryan (2016). A Life in Parts. Scribner. p. 144. On March 7, 1986, I ran in the first Los Angeles Marathon. It was also my thirtieth birthday...
^ abcdReichardt, Nancy M. (October 5, 1983). "Soap star loves his craft". The Prescott Daily Courier. p. 3. Archived from the original on October 22, 2021. Retrieved February 8, 2014.
^Cranston, Bryan (October 11, 2016). A Life in Parts. Simon and Schuster. ISBN9781476793856. Archived from the original on February 1, 2017. Retrieved February 2, 2017.
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