He is the American actor, screenwriter and director, who gained popularity for the secondary role of dentist Tim Whatley in the sitcom Seinfeld and Walter White in the TV series Breaking Bad. Cranston received the Emmy Award in the nomination Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series three years in a row for the series Breaking Bad. Learn more about Los Angeles comedians you should know about. Read more on los-angeles.pro.
Biography
Bryan Cranston was born on March 7, 1956 in San Fernando, California, into an acting family. His mother, actress Annalisa Peggy Sell, participated in a radio show. His father, Joseph Louis Cranston, was an actor and producer. At the age of 12, Bryan experienced the divorce of his parents and the loss of his parents’ home due to financial inability to pay the bills. The crisis forced Bryan and his older brother to move to his grandparents’ house for a year. Cranston grew up in Los Angeles, graduated from Canoga Park High School and Los Angeles Valley College.
After graduation, Bryan decided to follow in his father’s footsteps. At first, Cranston worked in a local theater and starred in television commercials. Then, he began to appear in television series. Bryan quickly became popular, playing in such famous TV shows as Baywatch, Walker, Third Rock from the Sun and others.
The most successful for him was the series Malcolm in the Middle, which started in the 2000s. At that time, the actor was already 44 years old. In this project, Bryan tried himself as a director, shooting several episodes himself. For this work, he was nominated for the prestigious Emmy Award. For the role of one of the three restless brothers, Hal, Cranston received his first nomination for the Golden Globe Award. In parallel with filming on television, Bryan sometimes appeared in big movies. The actor has episodic roles in the films Little Miss Sunshine, Saving Private Ryan, Drive and others.
Career success
Loud success came to him after the release of the television project Breaking Bad in 2008. There, Bryan played a terminally ill chemistry teacher engaged in the manufacture of drugs for his family. Critics point out that Walter White is a modern-day Faust, a brilliant chemist and almost a Nobel Prize laureate. This knowledge brings him closer to the foundations of the world. Flashbacks show how he works to derive a single formula for a person, from which he categorically excludes the soul. The world and man of the new Faust is a continuous chemical reaction. Breaking Bad is recognized as one of the most significant television series for the film industry. It is ranked among the best TV shows of all time by Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes. In the city where the series was filmed, bronze statues of Walter White and Jesse Pinkman, the main characters of the series, were installed. It can be seen in the city of Albuquerque in the American state of New Mexico. In Albuquerque, most of the episodes of the crime drama were filmed, as well as the spin-off Better Call Saul. The statues were designed by the artist Trevor Grove and cast by the American Fine Arts Foundry company. All five seasons of the TV project were wildly popular. As a result, the 52-year-old Cranston won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series for his role as a teacher-drug dealer and was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for the second time. For this role, the actor received a total of 8 awards for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series, a Television Critics Association Award for Individual Achievement in Drama and a two-time Saturn Award for Best Actor on Television.
After this triumph, the actor began to appear more often in high-budget Hollywood projects. He starred in Brad Furman’s thriller The Lincoln Lawyer, in Steven Soderbergh’s disaster film Contagion, Andrew Stanton’s fantasy drama John Carter, Adam Shankman’s musical comedy Rock of Ages, the fantastic action film Len Wiseman’s Total Recall, Ben Affleck’s military drama Argo and Gareth Edwards’ adventure thriller Godzilla.
In 2015, Bryan played the lead role of Hollywood screenwriter Dalton Trumbo in Jay Roach’s biopic Trumbo, which earned the actor an Academy Award nomination. In addition to filming and working on television, Bryan Cranston is engaged in dubbing cartoons and recording audio versions of children’s books.
Personal life
Bryan Cranston was married twice. The first wife was the writer Mickey Middleton. The second wife is actress Robin Dearden, whom Brian met on the set of the television series Airwolf. He has a daughter, Taylor Dearden. She was born in 1993.
The actor is a big fan of baseball. He has supported the teams Philadelphia Phillies and Los Angeles Dodgers for a long time. In addition, he runs and participates in marathon competitions. He likes to play the drums in his free time.
In April 2014, Cranston performed at the AIDS Easter Bonnet Competition alongside Idina Menzel, Fran Drescher and Denzel Washington, raising funds for his Broadway show All the Way.
The actor described his career in a book. He mentioned a difficult fate, where he had to play many roles: a bodyguard, a painter, a priest, a suspect in a murder, a lover, a husband and, finally, a father. Of course, the actor told where he found inspiration for creating the image of the legendary Walter White.