Today, Bryan Cranston is in Chiswick. I mention this only because it’s rather amusing to think of the well-to-do residents of this part of west London suddenly encountering the actor – so famed as Breaking Bad’s drug kingpin Walter White – in their local coffee shop.
He’s in town shooting and producing an episode of the forthcoming sci-fi anthology Philip K Dick’s Electric Dreams. With Channel 4 involved, it’s a series of standalone stories, each with a different director and cast. “We’re embracing the eclectic nature of it,” he says.
At 61, Cranston is having the time of his life. A jobbing actor for 20-odd years, he found success with comedy Malcolm in the Middle and then Breaking Bad, winning him multiple Emmys. It was a turn of fate he calls “shockingly surprising”.
“I’ve been very fortunate. I married a woman who is a better person than I am. It’s not difficult for me to look at her and say, ‘Boy, I got lucky’”
He’s since been nominated for an Oscar for playing a blacklisted screenwriter in Trumbo, won a Tony on Broadway for playing President Lyndon B Johnson in All the Way and gone behind the camera, notably co-creating the Amazon TV show Sneaky Pete.
This month, he stars in Wakefield, an adaptation of an EL Doctorow short story about a lawyer who abandons his wife (Jennifer Garner) and teenage girls and, with none any the wiser, sets up home in the attic opposite, allowing him to observe their lives without him. Cranston was intrigued when he read the script by writer-director Robin Swicord. “I kept thinking about it, and that’s a good sign. I trust those instincts, regardless of box-office potential.”
While the film stretches credibility at points, Cranston argues that it’s a fantasy we all have: “Everyone, to my knowledge, has that normal human condition where you wonder, ‘What if I didn’t follow through on my responsibilities today?’”
In the case of his character, Howard Wakefield, the existence turns sour as he’s left eating from dustbins and shivering with hypothermia. “He intended to push the pause button for one night, then it escalates and the chasm gets too large to cross.”
I ask whether the film made Cranston contemplate his own 28-year marriage to actress Robin Dearden, whom he met when he was playing a villain in an episode of 1980s TV show Airwolf and she was a hostage. “Yes,” he nods.
“When you are raised without money, you have an appreciation of it because you knew what it was like without it”
“You go through your ups and downs and hopefully you come out the other side feeling good. I’ve been very fortunate. I married a woman who is a better person than I am. It’s not difficult for me to look at her with admiration and love and say, ‘Boy, I got lucky’.”
Their daughter, Taylor Dearden, 24, is now acting and Cranston couldn’t be more delighted. “The only thing you want your child to experience is joy. You want them to be passionate about whatever it is they choose to do. I just want her to take it for all it has to offer; like anything else, there will be ups and downs.”
As he pointed out in his recent autobiography A Life In Parts, Cranston has endured his own fair share of downs. Reliving “harrowing” moments on the page “was very cathartic”, he says.
He was born in California, the middle child of three; his father, Joe, was a womaniser (and occasional B-movie actor) who left the family when Cranston was 11; when she wasn’t drinking, his mother, Peggy, tried in vain to keep the bank from foreclosing on the house. Eventually, he was forced to live with his grandparents.
Did this early trauma make him careful with money? “Very much so. You are a product of your upbringing and if you have not learnt those lessons, then you are a fool. When you are raised without money, you have a learning curve figuring out what to do with money, and hopefully you’re wise.
“‘Breaking Bad’ completely changed my life. I’m more private now. I make decisions based on how much exposure there is. I’d rather call room service at a hotel than go out”
“But I’ll tell you, you do have an appreciation of it because you knew what it was like without it. Same with a sense of entitlement: I don’t ever want to get to a point where I feel the world owes me.”
Cranston landed his first role at seven, when his father cast him in a United Way commercial, but he didn’t start acting seriously until after college. Regional theatre gave way to soap opera (ABC’s Loving), guest spots on shows like Seinfeld and even a small part in Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan. He was happy with his lot.
“If you’re poor, you take things as they come and you’re appreciative of what comes,” he says. It was only when he turned 40, cast as the hapless father Hal in the comedy Malcolm in the Middle, that his career took off.
Even Breaking Bad was a slow burn – until it became a phenomenon. “Completely changed my life,” he shrugs. “It gave me tremendous opportunity, and I am eternally grateful for it.”
Yet losing his anonymity took its toll. “I’m more private now. I make decisions based on how much exposure there is. I’d rather call room service at a hotel than go out.”
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He lights up when talking about Breaking Bad’s spin-off prequel, Better Call Saul, of which he is a huge fan. Could he ever return as Walter White?
“I don’t know if Walter will return. I do know that if [the show’s creators] Peter Gould and Vince Gilligan wanted me to, I would do it. Breaking Bad was so well crafted – the beginning, the middle, the end – that when I’m asked if I miss it, my answer honestly is ‘No’.”
He’s hardly had time, anyway, with three films currently in post-production. Last Flag Flying is the latest Richard Linklater movie, a sequel – in spirit, at least – to Hal Ashby’s The Last Detail. Then there’s Untouchable, the US remake of the huge French hit about a wheelchair-bound wealthy white man and his black caregiver, pairing Cranston with comedian Kevin Hart.
Finally, he’ll be voicing a character in Wes Anderson’s animation Isle of Dogs – the story of a pack of canines relegated to an island. “It’s not like something that we’ve seen before,” he says.
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In November, he’s returning to London to star at the National Theatre in a production of Network, playing Howard Beale – the role of the unhinged TV anchor from the 1976 movie that won Peter Finch an Oscar.
Beyond that, he’s philosophical about what’s around the corner. “I know this wave that I’m on right now will reach the shore. And when it does, I want to be thoroughly exhausted. I just want to sit on that warm beach for a while and enjoy someone else’s ride.”
‘Wakefield’ is available on digital download from today and on DVD from Monday
