Bryan Cranston

Bryan Lee Cranston (born March 7, 1956) is an American actor, voice actor, producer, writer and director. He is best known for playing Walter White on the AMC series Breaking Bad (2008–2013), Hal on the Fox sitcom Malcolm in the Middle (2000–2006), and Dr. Tim Whatley on the NBC sitcom Seinfeld (1994–1997). His performance on Breaking Bad is widely regarded as one of the best performances in television history.

For Breaking Bad, Cranston won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series four times (2008, 2009, 2010, and 2014), the first three of which were consecutive wins—the second time in television history after Bill Cosby in I Spy during the 1960s. After becoming a producer of the show in 2011, he also won the award for Outstanding Drama Series twice. He was previously nominated three times for the Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series for his role in Malcolm in the Middle. Breaking Bad earned Cranston five Golden Globe nominations (with one win), nine Screen Actors Guild Award nominations (with four wins), and six Satellite Award nominations (with four wins).

In June 2014, Cranston won a Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play for his portrayal of president Lyndon B. Johnson in the play All the Way on Broadway, a role he reprised in HBO's 2016 television film of the same name. In April 2018, he won the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actor for his portrayal of Howard Beale in Network at London's National Theatre, later winning his second Tony Award for playing the role on Broadway. For the film Trumbo (2015), he received widespread acclaim and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor.

Cranston has directed episodes of Malcolm in the Middle, Breaking Bad, Modern Family, and The Office. He has also appeared in several acclaimed films, such as Saving Private Ryan (1998), Little Miss Sunshine (2006), Drive (2011), Argo (2012), and Godzilla (2014). In 2015, Cranston and David Shore created, executive produced, and wrote the story for the Amazon Studios original crime drama Sneaky Pete.

## Early Life

Bryan Lee Cranston was born on March 7, 1956, in Hollywood, California, the second of three children born to Annalisa (née Sell; 1923–2004), a radio actress, and Joseph Louis Cranston (1924–2014), an actor and former amateur boxer. His father was of Austrian-Jewish, German, and Irish descent, while his mother was the daughter of German immigrants. He has an older brother, Kyle, and a younger sister, Amy. Cranston was raised in Canoga Park, California. 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. He then maintained a relationship with his father until his father's death in 2014.

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". After his father left, he was raised partly by his grandparents, living 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. In 1968, when he was 12 years old, he encountered a young Charles Manson while riding horses with his cousin at the Spahn Ranch. This happened about a year before Manson ordered the Tate-LaBianca murders. Cranston graduated from Canoga Park High School, where he was a member of the school's chemistry club, and earned an associate's degree in police science from Los Angeles Valley College in 1976.