- [Presenter] This program was funded by the following: Laura and John Beckworth, BP America, Joe Latimer and Joni Hartgraves, and also by: And by: A complete list of funders is available at APTonline.org and LiveFromLBJ.org.

- As we age, we have a tendency to reduce what we do to a manageable size and there's a whole cadre of things outside of that that we don't do anymore.

And I think the challenge is as we age is to not get so narrow with that, keep expanding as much as you can.

(bright rousing music) (bright rousing music fades) - Welcome to the LBJ Presidential Library in Austin, Texas.

I'm Mark Updegrove.

As an author, journalist, television commentator, and CEO of the LBJ Foundation, I've had the privilege of talking to some of the biggest names and best minds of our day about our nation's rich history and the pressing issues of our times.

Now we bring those conversations straight to you.

Bryan Cranston has had a remarkable acting career.

His iconic performance of Walter White in the series "Breaking Bad" changed the face of television.

A performance his fellow actor Anthony Hopkins called, "The best acting I have seen ever."

Tonight I talk to Bryan about his career and his many roles and what "Breaking Bad" says about America.

Bryan Cranston, welcome.

- Thanks, Mark.

Good to see you.

- Good to have you here.

- Thank you.

Good to be here.

- So I wanna talk to you about your remarkable career, starting with how you got in the industry.

You are the child of working actors and you saw firsthand the ups and downs of the industry.

Talk about your childhood and what you saw of the industry through your parents' eyes.

- Well, it was exciting when I was really young because being born and raised out in Los Angeles and my parents were actors, so we would go with them to studios and television sets and movie sets and play with the props and it was an adventure and it was fun.

But the reality of that is that it's a very difficult business.

There is never going to be a shortage of people wanting to be an actor.

So there's a tremendous amount of competition in that sense, and you have to have your head on straight and go into the business with the right frame of mind and that for me was to fall in love.

You have to fall in love with the empowerment that being an actor or writer or director offers.

And if you can do that, you establish a relationship.

And then, as I did when I was 22 years old, and I said, "Okay, this is where I'm going."

I was in love.

It just made me feel special.

It made me feel powerful to be able to recite a line of dialogue and have someone gasp at what I just said, or laugh or tighten up because of fear or anxiety, it's like, wow, the power of the written word and being able to convey that, it was amazing.

So I fell in love with it.

And I realized at that point, whatever the career was going to be for me, it was going to be.

If it meant I was sharing an apartment for the rest of my life, I was willing to do that.

I didn't have any designs on stardom or celebrity or money or any of those trappings that go along with it, which my father had.

- Did you know you were good, Bryan?

- I didn't.

I didn't realize I was good until I started into classes and I had a credo for myself that I'll get into a class as long as I know that most of these people are better than me.

It's like playing tennis.

In order for you to improve, you need to play tennis with someone better than you to see what they do and how they do it, and borrow and offer your advice.

And it's reciprocal and that kind of energy is exciting, but also, it's necessary to grow.

- What did those early years look like for you as an actor, your twenties and thirties?

- It was great.

And you know, my father's need to become a star really destroyed him.

And by extension, destroyed the family.

It broke up our family.

So you know, parents are always teaching.

In the best of things, they're teaching you how to behave and comport yourself and live a life of respect for others and things like that, and sometimes they teach you what not to do.

So in many cases, I look at my parents that had a trying marriage and broke up and then for the rest of their lives, it was really, really tough on them.

And I realized, oh, I can still learn from them what not to do, how not to behave.

I realized, oh, I think my dad caved in because he needed to be a star.

I don't need to be a star.

I just want to earn a living as an actor.

If I can do that, that would be my biggest achievement.

And to this day, it is my proudest professional achievement that at the age of 25, I've only acted for a living.

And that's what I hold dear because I still look at this and I still go on a set or on stage, and I say to my company of actors, I go, "Aren't we the luckiest people?

Look what we get to do for a living."

It's astonishing.

- Yeah.

- And I never wanna lose that.

But if I ever do, that's the day I retire.

If I ever feel like, "Oh, the magic's gone," or "Ah, I have to be there at 6:30 in the morning."

If I ever get to that point where I've lost the love, I'm out.

- I wanna talk about how you came to fame.

So let's start with "Malcolm in the Middle."

- Okay.

- Which ran for seven seasons.

You played Hal the father on that show.

That was your really first steady, really steady work.

And that led to "Breaking Bad."

Talk about how you go from "Malcolm in the Middle" playing Hal the father to "Breaking Bad" where you're playing Walter White.

- You need a lot of luck.

You need things to fall into place.

You know, I had done series before that would last three, six episodes, canceled.

You do a pilot, hey, this looks, no.

Okay.

You do a pilot that you don't think's gonna, oh, it went, oh, we did eight episodes, canceled.

You know, so it's that and you just have to keep riding that out, that your time will come.

And if you are committed in a relationship with acting, you're committed.

You're like, oh, this for better or worse.

It's the same as a marriage.

You are, I'm in it.

I'm in it all the way, and wherever it takes me is where I'll go.

And so I didn't really think of stardom or anything like that, I thought of what is the best thing for me to do?

When "Malcolm in the Middle" finished after seven seasons, there was talk that there might have been an eighth season, and I thought, "Oh God, that'd be great."

We're having so much fun.

It's just going to work and laughing all the time.

But it turned out not to be the case, Fox did cancel the show and so I now don't have a job.

I did a play that summer and then I got a call that there was a man named Vince Gilligan who remembered me from an episode of X-Files that he wrote and he wanted to see me for a new show called "Breaking Bad."

I didn't even know what that meant.

And so, "Oh, sure."

And they said, "Do you remember him?"

I go, "Nope."

They go, "Well, he wants to see you."

Okay.

Here's the script.

I read the script and it knocked me out.

I could not believe what he was attempting to do.

What he said he wanted to do never happened in the history of television.

And that was over the course of the run of a series, he wanted to change the character from good to bad.

And I thought, "I don't know if this would work."

And he even said, "I don't know if it's gonna work, but I'd like to try it."

You know?

And so I thought, "Let's go.

I would love to."

And he was my champion to get the role.

And the reality is is that if "Malcolm in the Middle" had been picked up for an eighth season, I would not have been able to do "Breaking Bad" and someone else would be sitting in this chair right now talking to Mark Updegrove.

- So I've gotten the pleasure of knowing you through the years.

And I'm not alone in thinking you're one of the nicest guys in the business.

There's no question about it.

How does a good guy get into the head of Walter White, who as you suggested, makes this dramatic transition from good to evil through the course of five seasons?

- Well, we are complex beings, aren't we?

I mean, we have good thoughts and we have bad thoughts, and we wanna present ourselves in a way that we wanna be seen.

We wanna respect others.

But there are anger issues and resentment and abandonment issues.

And whatever you have had going on in your life is part of the actor's toolkit.

Like in "Breaking Bad," when I first started that show, I felt that Walter White was much older than his actual chronological age.

And therefore, I patterned his body type after my dad's at the time, who was well into his seventies.

I wanted Walter White to feel invisible to himself, to the society.

Here's this man with a silly little mustache that I called impotent.

I wanted an impotent mustache.

I wanted the audience to subliminally feel that he's neither here nor there.

He's got one foot in the past and one half a foot in the present.

And you gave him a pass when he decided what I'm going to do is make crystal methamphetamine and sell it to raise money for my family 'cause I'm gonna be dead in two years.

- Because you're sympathizing with him at that point.

- Yeah.

You sympathize with him.

I don't approve of that, but you know what, I feel for this guy, so I'll go along with it.

It's kind of like fishing.

We put out the bait, the audience took the bait, and finally when there was enough line out there, Vince wanted to click and start reeling you in against your will.

And so that's when Walter White started to turn and do things that were reprehensible.

Questionable first and then reprehensible, then unforgivable.

And he wanted to see how long would you stay in alliance with him?

How long would you root for him?

There's usually a pivot point where people go, "Ah, I can't do it.

I hate that guy now."

And it's like but you're so invested that you can't stop watching.

And so we turned him and made him become this person.

- What do you think "Breaking Bad" says about the American story?

- Well, it was essential that it was placed at a time and in a location that people felt was authentic and believable.

It also illuminated the plight of a teacher's life.

Realizing that, oh, he's a full-time teacher, but he has to have a second job in order to make ends meet which is a valid condemnation of that situation and that we don't value teachers as much as we do, otherwise we would pay them accordingly.

- Yeah.

- The second thing was it also exposed the American healthcare system to realize that, oh, we are behind.

I firmly believe that there should be universal healthcare because just the thought of profiting off someone's illness is corruptible to me.

It's inhumane in all its intended meanings.

So that kind of showcased those things as we went along.

And then it also challenged people's sense of right and wrong.

What would you do?

Would you do the same thing?

I often say "Breaking Bad" wasn't a story about glorifying drugs.

It was a story about a person's decision making under pressure, which reveals character.

If he were a mathematics professor, let's say.

Well, he wouldn't have created a drug, he would've figured out how to count cards or manipulate something into getting as much money as he possibly can the same way.

So I think it was circumstantial that he was a chemist, and that was the route that he chose because that's what he knew.

- We are doing this conversation at the LBJ Library, which you know well- - Yeah.

- Because after playing Walter White, you came here to study the role of Lyndon Johnson, which you played in the Robert Schenkkan play "All the Way" for which you won a Tony and then later became an HBO film.

Why did you choose to play Lyndon Johnson?

- Because it scared me to a certain degree.

There's a lot more responsibility when an actor takes on a nonfictional role, as is the case with President Johnson.

He accomplished quite a bit.

He was a massive figure, physically, emotionally.

And it was a big bite.

But it came on the heels of the end of "Breaking Bad," and I realized I guess innately that I had just finished seven years of "Malcolm in Middle," and then I did five and a half years, six years of "Breaking Bad," I think it's time I get off of television and leave it alone.

So I gave myself three years to not appear on television.

I don't know why I picked three years, but it seemed like an amount of time that would allow things to settle, people can hopefully start to forget about those characters and allow me to then take on someone new.

And the perfect place to do that would be on stage, is to be able to do what I love to do in a different medium.

And this came up and it was available and I read it, and it was brilliant and complex, and it was going to require an intense amount of research.

And so I came here, met you here at the LBJ Library in Austin, Texas.

And you all opened up the doors for me and allowed me to discover what I was supposed to discover and get to the essence of the President of the United States.

And I was very fortunate to be able to do that and to read all the biographies and his own autobiography and have it just swirling and just live and just welcome him into my sensibilities.

When an actor, you keep wanting to just bring it in, bring it in.

And I do that by doing just a tremendous amount of research and imagination.

And you pull it all in.

And then at some point, it's almost like learning a language that you start to dream in that different language, you start to, oh, I'm starting to make this transition in my head and in my body.

Oops, I lost this.

See, I got too rambunctious.

About what that character would think and feel.

And then once that happens, I started to think and feel from the standpoint of the 36th president of the United States.

- I could see you consciously looking for a connection point- - Yeah.

- When you were here.

Where did you find it with LBJ?

- You know, there was a lot of a discussion about what Vietnam meant to his presidency, but there was also the huge contributions that he made.

Voting Rights Act, Civil Rights Act, Fair Housing Act.

I mean, tremendous accomplishments.

Starting to play him, I felt sometimes I was starting to defend him as well, because I'm starting to feel why he did these certain things, what was his motivation behind things.

And to protect his sensibility about Lady Bird and his daughters.

And I thought it was appropriate to be able to revisit his presidency, it's not revisionist history, it's to revisit the history and to honestly look at the entire spectrum of his presidency and say what went right, what went wrong.

How well he performed, where he dropped, even his own admission where he didn't do as much as he wanted to do or could have done.

He still had that burning desire to achieve.

And that was fantastic.

And it was great to be able to get into his shoes and take him on.

For an actor, the more that that comes in, it's like holding onto a handle when you're performing.

It's like a safety belt in a rollercoaster.

It's like you're going for a hell of a ride but I think I'm feeling pretty secure.

Without that, you're like, "Oh!"

I don't know what to hold onto or where to go and you feel a little lost.

And that's when you start panicking.

- Which of the roles that you've played do you most relate to?

- Oh, well, it's kind of silly to say, but there's a role I did in a adult comedy called "Why Him?"

about a guy my age who doesn't like the boyfriend of his beloved daughter.

I have a daughter.

It was like, oh.

And it's just like, oh, I just step in.

And it was probably the most fun I've had doing any production was we were laughing constantly and I got to play me, basically.

And so it was relatively easy to slip into that.

But you don't want that all the time.

I need that challenge.

I need a role to scare me in order to (strains) you know?

And there's a reason because in life, there are things in life that scare us, but we still should do them.

We still need to walk through that flame and go, "I'm petrified, but I have to be here.

I have to do this."

And then there are things that you go, "That scares me and I don't want to do that and I'm not gonna do that."

And as we age, we have a tendency to reduce what we do to a manageable size and there's a whole cadre of things outside of that that we don't do anymore.

And I think the challenge is as we age is to not get so narrow with that, keep expanding as much as you can.

So you're still exploring, still attempting, still failing, maybe, and yeah, and you're still trying things as opposed to playing it safe and "No, no, no, no.

I only do this now."

I eat dinner at this hour, I go to bed at this hour, I get up at this hour.

And if you do that, I think you're narrowing your life's options and I still want to feel and try and touch and take chances.

- What advice do you give young actors who want to be successful like Bryan Cranston?

- (chuckles) Well, first of all, I think it's to really understand the depth of your relationship with performing.

If it's just like, "Gosh, that was fun," they should go do community theater or join a class in a community college or something and perform.

But there's a difference between performing on stage and choosing to make it an occupation, is a chasm that is quite wide.

And you should only make that crossover if you absolutely have to.

If you daydream about being an actor, if you watch performances and get inspired and it makes you impossible to go to sleep right away.

If you're like, "Oh, I need to talk about it.

I need to think about it," that's a good indication that there's a flame inside.

And you need that because you need to be able to sustain the hardships that a professional acting career will present.

And like I said, there's never going to be a shortage of actors.

You're not gonna see wanted, oh, we need more actors!

Where is everybody?

It's like everybody wants to be.

But I will do classes in colleges and talk to the acting and if I get a question like, "Yeah, how much money do you make?"

Or "What kind of cars do you drive?"

I go, "By the way, that person who asked the question should never try to become a professional actor if that's what you're thinking about."

It's never about that.

And I try to discourage, I say, "I could save you several years of hanging around thinking you're going to be an actor."

When the first real big pushback, it's like, nah, you know.

Or someone comes out to Hollywood or to New York and says, "I'm gonna give it two years.

I'm gonna give it two years to make it."

And I'll say, "Why two years?"

"I don't know."

And what does make it mean?

And they have this variety of silly things that they've latched onto that have no connection to reality.

So I really try to encourage to find your community.

If it goes beyond that, test it.

It's better to try something and fail at it than to never try.

I think regret is probably the worst things that someone could take with them into their old age, is like, "I wish I had tried.

I wish I had done it."

It's better to go, "Oh boy, I tried.

I went out and I realized, oh, I am not that talented.

I couldn't do it."

It's like, but at least you tried.

You were there.

You put your foot in and tried to do it.

Yeah.

- So it seems like this acting thing has worked out for you a little bit.

- Yeah.

- Bryan Cranston, thanks so much for being with us.

- Thanks, Mark.

(bright rousing music) (bright rousing music continues) (bright rousing music continues) - [Presenter] This program was funded by the following: Laura and John Beckworth, BP America, Joe Latimer and Joni Hartgraves.

And also by: And by: A complete list of funders is available at APTonline.org and LiveFromLBJ.org.

(cheerful chime) (bright chime)