Bryan Cranston Quotes

The imagination is part of the arsenal that actors draw from.

Luck is a component that a lot of people in the arts sometimes fail to recognise: that you can have talent, perseverance, patience, but without luck you will not have a successful career.

My passion is becoming involved in good work, whether that means as an actor or writer or director or producer or all - that is not as important to me.

When 'Malcolm in the Middle' was over, I was looking for a drama more than a comedy ... but if it was a comedy that came up, it would have to be as well-written as 'Malcolm' was, and it would have to be a different kind of character than I played on that show. That's harder to come by. In drama, there were more opportunities, more options for me, and when I read ('Breaking Bad'), it was just, 'Good night, Nurse! I'm going after this sucker!'

When everyone has high expectation for you, it can attack your insecurities.

It's funny, I do try to maintain health. I started doing Bikram yoga which is that hothouse yoga, the 105 degrees yoga for 90 minutes. It's great, you purge out all the sweat and you're drinking water.

In order to be an actor you really have to be one of those types of people who are risk-takers and have what is considered an actor's arrogance, which is not to say an arrogance in your personal life. But you have to be the type of person who wants the ball with seconds left in the game.

Every experience feeds an actor, and I've learned that depression is all around us.

My dear friend Aaron Paul, I love you so much.

Something's happened in our society which I don't think is beneficial, and that's that you see the public being fed box-office news. Newscasts now, every local station - I've been traveling around the country a lot, and you see the local news, and they give box-office reports.

I have some anger issues.

Our whole society is instantaneous.

It doesn't matter if you're good. If you're just good, you won't succeed. If you have patience and persistence and talent and that's it, you will not have a successful career as an actor. The elusive thing you need is luck.

I have a bad habit of inserting my ideas into shots and things. I don't know, I don't hold back on suggesting things, but I don't have any connection to what actually happens, so I'll make a suggestion on something and then just let it go.

Ever since I stopped worrying about finances, I've made more money than I ever thought I'd make in my life.

In real life, as it is in fiction, character is both formed and revealed when we are tested. When we are forced to make decisions under pressure, that test can either make us stronger or it can highlight our weaknesses and crack us into pieces.

If you're a person who complains about everything all the time, then you're just the boy who cried 'wolf.' But if you do it on occasion and about the right reasons, then people listen.

Love is not as important as good health. You cannot be in love if you're not healthy. You can't appreciate it.

You don't want to be a Kardashian.

I look like everyone.

I don't think life owes me anything and the business doesn't owe me anything. The only way to approach it is by working hard and loving what you do. If you do that and have faith, maybe you will get lucky. I mean that sincerely and specifically. I truly believe that no professional career in the arts is capable without a healthy dose of luck.

When I was a kid there were a very select few channels - programmes had to have more of a large appeal and they just didn't offer very much. Now you have a situation where the television world has expanded and there's hundreds of channels.

That's the reason you want to become a star as an actor, to be able to have more control of your destiny.

We've been trained since kindergarten: Be nice, be kind, share, put on a smile. So we're conditioned to squash our natural selfish instincts, and that's the right thing for society.

I can tell you for sure: people who are at their peak right now will not sustain that. You can't. It's against the law of nature.

I think naturally, if you're an actor, there's a high level of assertiveness that you need to have to survive this business. There's boldness in being assertive, and there's strength and confidence.

​It's okay to be afraid. Being afraid can sometimes mean that you're actually doing something worthwhile.

At my age, I don't think anyone is untouched by cancer.

I don't really relax. When I sleep, I relax.

This self-congratulatory notion Americans have that their country is Number One is borne of ignorance and bad manners.

As a director you come in and tell the actors how good they are.

The TV business is like the produce section of the market. Today everything is fresh and glistening and firm. And tomorrow, when they find a bruise on you, they toss you out.

I'm telling you, until I shaved my head, I never realized how much heat is lost through the top of the head. I walk out in winter and it feels like I have an ice pack on my head. Unbelievable.

Money has never been my primary goal.

When actors first come up, you're auditioning for everything - you're trying to sniff it out like a pig with a truffle and you would do anything!

If you have a screaming angry director, everyone else will be panicked as well.

The greatest thing about youth is that you're not yet battle-weary, so you'll try anything.

I've done more crap than I care to remember. I really have. 'Airwolf.' 'Murder, She Wrote.' 'Amazon Women on the Moon.' But you learn from all these bad shows. What you don't want to do and what you don't want to be involved with.

When you play a non-fiction character it is more responsibility than when you are playing a fiction character because that person lived, and you do want to pay respect to that.

I enjoy storytelling. I like to write it, I like to direct it, I like to act in it, I like to produce it. I like to be around storytellers. That's what excites me.

Actors are inherently self-centered.

Actors, writers, directors - that triumvirate of creativity - we have to rely and trust each other to be able to get to the final product.

What used to frustrate me going into an audition was that some inexperienced, lesser casting people would think that actors are acting only when they're speaking.

The only thing that we as actors really can control is to be able to say 'yes' or 'no' to the material.

I think the best-written films or television series have a measure of the opposite of what they are.

It's in our nature to be intrigued. We're putting the bread crumb not in your mouth but close to your mouth. You reach a little bit, and that's why it works.

I have a lovely family who supports me and it's great.

There's boldness in being assertive; there's strength and confidence.

I'm just a big boy, I'm still just playing cowboys and Indians and astronaut and baseball player and all that stuff that I used to play as a kid.

Love between two adults is always conditional. You can fall out of love because you are able to fall in love.

People would love to be rich, but they're looking for the easy way. Who wouldn't want to win the lottery? Just to score.

I don't have spare time.

I think if you believe in past lives, I must have been an extremely deprived being. I must have been mistreated, beaten, and forced into indentured servitude because this life has just been phenomenal.

Part of an actor's job is to draw up a back story.

There's this notion that in order to draw attention and to be considered for roles I want to be considered for, you need a certain amount of notoriety.

My goal has always been to be a working actor.

It's like a dance, to choreograph a fight is like a dance. It's very specific. You have to carefully plan it out. Because if someone gets hurt, then we didn't do our job, someone screwed up. The fight choreographers and the actors involved, we messed up somewhere.

I think it's not a question of why, more a question of why not.

When you're directing an ongoing series, the tone has already been set. So a director will come in and fulfill that tone - reinforce the characters and their behavior. The challenge is to find unique ways that you can visually tell the story while keeping the established tone and the pace and the characters.

If something is well-written, it has a chance to be good and if it's not well-written, it will not be good. It could even become popular, but it won't be good.

Every time you start a project, you're hopeful that the critics receive it warmly.

Because we had known the good times, I think my brother and I felt the loss more acutely. My father's waning presence, his chronic absence, his disappearance. Now he was just a memory.

You get addicted to emotions. Our endorphins kick in and it's like a high. On the low end you might love roller coasters. On the high end you might be a bank robber or something.

What's great about comedy, obviously, is that you set up a situation that people assume one thing and then you break the assumption. That's basically the backbone to comedy. You set up a situation, let people make an assumption, and then you break the assumption.

If you have a level of expectation in your life that you have to be a quote-unquote star, whatever that means, you might be setting yourself up for failure.

What's interesting is a man with no facial hair is less intimidating than a man with facial hair, and a man who is bald is more intimidating than a man with hair.

I enjoy doing comedy for the fact that you go to work and you laugh. That's a good combination.

But the only way to get lucky is to be prepared for luck to find you.

It used to be that people would watch TV shows because they knew the characters would stay the same. Whether it's Archie Bunker or it's Thomas Magnum you watch it because it's like, 'I'm comfortable, this is the same guy.'

I want to be able to experience everything. I want to experience being a husband, experience being a father, experience, maybe, hopefully, someday being a grandfather, and all those things. I want that experience. When I die, I want to be exhausted.

Console the failure, but nurture the hunger.

To me, character in a person is judged by the decisions that are made under pressure.

Bad for the sake of bad is boring to me and not believable.

The best teacher is experience. Find the educational in every situation.