Cranston - A Life in Parts

For Kyle and Amy: We made it. A life worth salvaging.

For Robin and Taylor: You made it a life worth living.

One man in his time plays many parts.

William Shakespeare, As You Like It

Walter White

She stopped coughing. Maybe shed fallen back asleep. Then suddenly vomit flooded her mouth. She grasped at the sheets. She was choking. I instinctively reached to turn her over.

But I stopped myself.

Why should I save her? This little junkie, Jane, was threatening to blackmail me, expose my enterprise to the police, destroy everything I had worked for, and wipe out the financial life preserver I was trying to leave my familythe only legacy I could leave them.

She gurgled, searching for a gasp of air. Her eyes rolled back in her head. I felt a stab of guilt. Goddamn it, shes just a girl. Do something.

But if I stepped in now, wasnt I just delaying the inevitable? Dont they all at some point end up dead? And poor dumb comatose Jesse, my partner, lying beside her. Shes the one who got him on this shit in the first place. Shed kill them both, kill us all, if I stepped in now and played God.

I told myself: just stay out of it. When he wakes hell discover this tragedythis accidenton his own. Yes, its sad. All death is sad. But hell get over it in time. Hell get past this like every other bad thing thats happened to us. Thats what humans do. We heal. We move on. A few months from now hell barely remember her. Hell find another girlfriend, and hell be fine. Fuck it. We all have to move on.

Ill just pretend I wasnt here.

But I am here. And shes a human being.

Oh God. What have I become?

And then, somehow, as she was fading, she wasnt herself anymore. I wasnt looking at Jane, or Jesses girlfriend, or the actor Krysten Ritter. I was looking at Taylor, my daughter, my real daughter. I wasnt Walter White anymore. I was Bryan Cranston. And I was seeing my daughter die.

From the moment she was born in 1993a bit premature, shy of seven pounds, impossibly beautifulI felt an instant, radical, unconditional love that redefined love. I had never allowed myself to imagine losing her. But now, I was seeing it. Clearly. Vividly. She was slipping from me. She was dying.

That was not the plan. When I do the homework for such a delicate scene, I dont make a plan. My goal when I prepare isnt to plot out each action and reaction, but to think: What are the possible emotional levels my character could experience? I break the scene down into moments or beats. By doing that work ahead of time, I leave a number of possibilities available to me. I stay open to the moment, susceptible to whatever comes.

The homework doesnt guarantee anything; with luck, it gives you a shot at something real.

It was real fear that gripped memy worst fear. A fear I hadnt fully expected or come to terms with. And my reaction is there, forever, at the end of that scene. I gasp, and my hand moves to my mouth in horror.

When the director, Colin Bucksey, said, Cut, I was weeping. Deep racking sobs. I explained to the people on set what had happened, what I had seen. Michael Slovis, our cinematographer, embraced me. My castmates, too. I remember in particular Anna Gunn, who played my wife, Skyler. I hugged her. I must have held on for five minutes. Poor Anna.

Anna knew. As an actor she has a fragility at her core, and she often had a hard time shedding her characters emotions after shooting difficult scenes.

That will happen in an actors life, and it happened to me that day. It was the most harrowing scene I did on Breaking Bad , and really... ever.

It may seem odd. It may even seem ghoulish. To stand in a room packed with people and lights and cameras and pretend Im letting a girl choke to death. And then to see my daughters face in lieu of that girl. And to call that work. To call that your job.

But its not odd to me. Actors are storytellers. And storytelling is the essential human art. Its how we understand who we are.

I dont mean to make it sound high-flown. Its not. Its discipline and repetition and failure and perseverance and dumb luck and blind faith and devotion. Its showing up when you dont feel like it, when youre exhausted and you think you cant go on. Transcendent moments come when youve laid the groundwork and youre open to the moment. They happen when you do the work. In the end, its about the work.

Every day on Breaking Bad Id wake up about 5:30 and have coffee, take a shower, get dressed. Some days I was so tired, I didnt know whether I was coming or going.

Id drive the nine miles from my condo in Nob Hill to Q Studios, five miles south of the airport in AlbuquerqueABQ as the locals call it. Id be in the makeup chair by 6:30. Id shave my head anew. Knock down the nubs. It didnt take too long for makeup. By 7:00 a.m. wed see everyone: the other actors, the crew. Then wed start rehearsing.

The allotment was a twelve-hour shoot. Plus a one-hour lunch. So a normal day was thirteen hours. It was very rare that the day was shorter. Occasionally, it was longer. Some days went seventeen hours. A lot of it had to do with whether we were on location.

If it was just a minimum day, wed wrap at 8:00 p.m. Then Id grab a sandwich and apple for the road. I didnt want to take the time to stop. Id call my wife, Robin, from the car. How are you? Yeah, long day. Id see how she was doing. Id ask about Taylor. Id still be talking to her when I walked into the house. Id say goodnight and then have that sandwich while looking over what we were doing the next day. Id take a hot bath with a little glass of red wine. Then Id hit the sack.

But even before the drive home, every night after we finished, Id go in the hair and makeup trailer and take two hot, wet towels that my friends in the makeup department had presoaked, and Id drape one over my head and Id wrap the other over my face. Id sit in the chair and let everything soak off, feeling all the toxins drain away. Id sit until the towels went cold against my face, leeching myself of Walter White.

That day I saw Jane diethat day I saw Taylors facethat day I went to a place Id never been, I opened my eyes and stared through the scrim of the white towel into the light above. Id put everything, everything, into that scene. All the things I was and all the things I might have been: all the side roads and the missteps. All the stuttering successes and the losses I thought might sink me. I was murderous and I was capable of great love. I was a victim, moored by my circumstances, and I was the danger. I was Walter White.

But I was never more myself.

Son

My parents met like most people do: in an acting class in Hollywood.

My mother was born Annalisa Dorthea Sell, but she was always called Peggy. Peggy was an impulsive girl, fun-loving, a flirt. In her youth she had a genuine innocence about her. She was one of those blond, blue-eyed cuties always told she ought to be in the movies. And so after a two-year stint in the Coast Guard and a failed starter marriage to a man named Easy, she left Chicago for Los Angeles, the land of empty promises, and she flung herself into auditions and acting lessons.