- He's an American actor, director,
screenwriter and producer.
He's best known for portraying Walter White
in the AMC crime drama series Breaking Bad.
He won four Primetime Emmy Awards for
Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series.
He's Bryan Cranston and here are his
top ten rules for success.
(airplane flying)
(basketball bounce)
- I started working in this business in 1979
so I've been doing it for 32 years.
- And you got steady work you had lots of gigs.
- [Bryan] Yeah but but the last ten years
have been just crazy.
You know I think I think
there is truth in the saying that you have to
know when it's your time.
And sometimes you know people go through
their awkward moments in high school
and they feel gangly and they're not you know
they're not sure of themselves and things.
This seems to be my time.
It waited awhile but I'm glad it's here.
Well the best the best advice for fellow actors
is this, know what your job is.
About 18 years ago I had this cognition that I
realized I was going into auditions
trying to get a job
and that simply wasn't what I was doing.
It wasn't what I said what I'm supposed to be doing.
An actor is supposed to create a compelling
and interesting character
that serves the text we presented in the
environment where you audition.
And then you walk away
and that's it.
Everything else is out of your control
so don't even think of, don't focus on that.
You're not going there to get a job
you're going there to present what you do.
You act and there it is and walk away.
There's power in that, there's confidence in that.
And it's also saying I can only do so much
and then the decision of who might get a job
is so out of your control that it can really
when you analyze it it makes no sense to hold on to that.
That to me was a breakthrough.
And once I adapted that philosophy I never looked back
and I've never been busier in my life.
And once I grabbed onto that.
For me when I first read the first page of the pilot script
it read just like you saw,
opened up on a beautiful setting, red mountains,
trousers are falling from the sky.
They hit the ground, an RV rolls over them.
Inside there's a middle-aged man only wearing
tighty whitey underwears
and a respirator driving madly in the back
two dead bodies sliding up and back in a sea
of fluid and glass.
Another man passed out with a respirator.
And I'm thinking what the fuck is going on?
(laughing)
That was page one. (laughing)
And it took off from there and so it
was it was one of those those rare moments
when you respond to
a piece of material so strongly
that I knew I had to get in as fast as I could
to try to get this role.
Because the the longer I waited I knew that every actor
in Hollywood would want to would want to be a part of this.
And fortunately I was the one to get it.
Being able to display all that you feel
is not unlike a person wanting to
experience everything in life.
You don't always want to be serious you don't
always want to be silly.
You want to have moments in each, for me anyway.
And so that's why I look for different projects
different things that take me to more challenging areas
difficult or easy or fun, simple.
Sometimes incredibly complex like Breaking Bad.
I had a cognitive moment when I was 22 years old
and my brother and I were riding motorcycles
across the country for a couple years
because we were both trying to figure out
what we wanted to do with our lives.
And it was raining, I was on the Blue Ridge Parkway
in Virginia and it was raining hard.
So we found this little off the beaten path
rest stop that was near a creek.
And there was a slab of cement with four wooden posts
and a roof and a picnic table.
At this rest stop no one else was there
it was pouring rain.
So we pulled our motorcycles and jumped up the curb
right up onto it.
It looked like we were going to be there for a while
so we set up a camp on this slab of cement.
And it stayed there for six days
because it didn't stop raining.
And over the six days the only thing that really got me
through was reading a book of a thick book of plays
it was on a motorcycle so I couldn't take a lot.
So I had this book of plays and I was reading Hedda Gabler
Ibsen's Hedda Gabler at the time.
And and all of a sudden it was nightfall, it was dark.
I went what and I realized wow that went fast
because I was so into the reading and I thought
man that would be.
And it just went everything lifted and I went
that's what I should do.
I loved getting lost in story
so I want to tell stories.
And I had done some acting and I thought
that's what I need to do I need to
follow that lead get involved
in something that I love to do
and hopefully become good at it.
As opposed to getting trapped into something
I happen to be good at but I didn't love.
The success of an actor is being willing to
go into those dark places and and
display them publicly.
We have to have that kind of courage and vulnerability
to do that.
In high school all the way through school I remember
trying to stay the same as everyone else.
I didn't want to stand out everyone were wearing that
and this is what everybody else is wearing
I kind of want to I don't want to be isolated or ostracized.
Certainly I don't want to be embarrassed or have someone
point the finger at you, look at that guy, you know.
What happens is that we think that if you are vulnerable
and sensitive and open that you'll be ridiculed.
And but as adults when we mature what we realize is
that if you have the audacity to display those human
honest emotions that the opposite is what happens.
People embrace someone who is in trouble,
someone who is vulnerable, someone who is frightened.
We they they have a tendency to come forward and put
their emotional arms around you.
As an actor you need to to study human behavior in some ways
in order to do that you test.
You behave a certain way
and the response to that informs you
whether it's working or not.
You know I think in ways without me consciously
knowing it I'm always kind of experimenting with characters
in waves and seeing how it feels to be a certain way.
It's intriguing.
Shirley Knight was was interesting because she got me
over a hump where I was putting up resistance
to be you know to say you know I was
getting some work and I was starting
I was working exclusively as an actor since I was
25 years old, 24 years old.
I've never done anything else from that point on.
And I came to her later
and I was working as an actor and she said, "Own it."
You know because I was putting it, oh no, I don't want to be
I don't want to be a star I don't want to because.
Let all that go and just again
philosophy let it come in let it come on.
Whatever's supposed to happen happens and let it go.
You don't have to hold on to it and hold a mirror
up to yourself but
but just let it let it flow.
And she she had a point that was very interesting,
to to accept and embrace an actor's arrogance.
And at at first you, arrogance oh,
I don't want to be arrogant.
And she goes, "No, but it's okay.
"Because actors like athletes are the ones who say,
"give me the ball three seconds left.
"I want to take the shot.
"Or whoever is best to take the shot you take the shot.
"Well we'll do all we can to make sure that you get."
You know whatever the case but you want that shot.
And then there are some kids you know who,
"Don't give me the ball, don't send it to me,
"don't leave it to me I don't want that responsibility.
"I don't want that pressure."
And an actor has to be the type of person that says,
"Give it to me, let me try this."
Takes a chance.
You have to have a healthy dose of luck
to become successful.
That's just the way it is.
You can't you can't prepare for it
but you can be ready for it if it does come to you.
I was very lucky to get that role on X-Files
simply because I was physically in the city
where it was casting.
And I was out of the city for three weeks prior
and I very could have easily not been in town
and they just go on and someone else would have got the role
and who knows where I would have been.
I certainly odds are very high that I wouldn't have gotten
Breaking Bad had I not met Vince Gilligan before.
So it's one of those things where you you
have to just do your wor, do the best you can
and hope for the lucky breaks here and there.
- In magic the most important thing to a magician
is his hands.
You know everything that you do is based on
being able to manipulate and right.
So this type of stuff it looks simple but it's actually me
working for a long time to figure out
how to do this stuff and it's practice
it's hours and hours and hours of practice.
So the one thing that a magician I think values more than
anything else is just the hands.
You're going to be the one picking the cup so that
the fate of my hands lies in your decisions.
Can you point to one of the four cups?
- How much is riding on this?
- Everything. - Everything.
- That one. - Yes.
(dramatic music)
- Oh. - That was a good guess.
(dramatic music)
I saw your reaction. (laughing)
- [Woman] Ohhh.
- But the truth is
maybe it doesn't matter one way or another.
Like ultimately when we watch magic
the problem with this trick
is you don't want this to
really succeed because no personal curiosity is
what would happen if that went through the hand.
- Ohhhhhh
- See how that really looks
like it's going through the hand?
- Yeah
- And does it really look like it's actually.
- It is yeah, oh God no.
- Oh wow.
- But there's no blood.
(screaming)
- No way!
Are you, oh God.
That is through your hand.
- There's no blood.
- Why?
It it, just pull that.
- Oh oh oh.
- Pull.
- It went through your hand.
It went through your hand, this is not a glove.
(banging)
It doesn't retract.
Oh my God.
- Wow wow that's the craziest thing I've ever
seen in my life obviously.
- I can't.
- You're out of your mind and most
you're just out of your minds.
In the most beautiful way possible.
My God.
- Thank you so much for watching I made this video
because Orion Dark Knight asked me to.
So if there's a famous entrepreneur that you
want me to profile next leave it in the
comments below and I'll see what I can do.
I'd also love to know what your Bryan Cranston's
top 10 rules meant the most to you.
Leave it in the comments and I'll join in the discussion.
Thank you so much for watching and continue to believe
and I'll see you soon
(airplane flying)
(basketball bounce)
(whoosh)
- And when you're playing a guy who's
afflicted with cancer you know the people watching the show
a lot of your audience has cancer.
- Yeah. - Like that's just
the nature of this new world we live in right now.
How do you play a guy like that when you know that
there are people who are really feeling it?
- Well the the responsibility of an actor
is to is to be truthful
in how you portray that.
So one of the one of the simple things is I knew
that when my character was going to go through
chemotherapy and radiation is that he would lose his hair.
So I shaved my head.
I also knew that from personal experience in my family
that the chemotherapy and primarily makes you
lose your appetite and it all tastes like metal inside
when you're going through that treatment.
And so you lose weight.
I lost 16 pounds in ten days.
- Hard to do that healthy.
- Yeah but I did it carefully.
I cut off my right leg.
(laughing) And this is a
prosthetic right there.
- Certainly got down there yeah.
- Sixteen pounds, easy.
- Just put in a bag, put in the freezer
we can attach it later.
- So no I measured the time between
when I would have my shirt off
you know when a shower scene or something
before the weight loss and then when I was going
to have my shirt off again after the chemotherapy.
And it was it was 16 days oh
it's in ten days
so that I had to quickly drop that weight.
I can tell you the the the best lesson
that I've ever learned as an actor
for my career is
always follow the well-written word.
It will never fail you.
Whatever production you may be in
may not necessarily be ultimately
quote-unquote a success.
The film, role may not be hit at the box office
but fuck that, who cares about that stuff?
It's not that's not your job to worry about those things.
It's to focus on on that work
and it's always
about the writing.
I have I know that as sure as I'm sitting here
when I when I decide to do a film or a play
or whatever the first thing I look for is the overall story.
How compelling is it?
How rich is it?
How important is it?
Will this make a social statement?
What, where in in line does
this you know rest.
The next is the text.
It's either the script or the play itself.
And they're not the same, make the distinction
between those things because sometimes you can have
a great story
it's just not fully realized by the the
script it just didn't quite hit it.
Or, the script was fantastic and I didn't think
the story was going to be so good
and all of a sudden now it's clear to me.
- My question is because I grew up in Albuquerque
what was there any cool places anything that you liked
being there?
Like how was it because it's my hometown.
So I want to know, how'd you like it?
Or did you have fun there?
- Yeah I'd go and visit your mother once in awhile.
(laughing and applause)