ShareThis"Breaking Bad" star Bryan Cranston modestly declines being The Man.
"I've been lucky, haven't I?" he says when reflecting over the past year.
In 2008, he won a Prime-time Emmy Award as Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama for "Breaking Bad," in which he plays a fatally ill high-school teacher making methamphetamine to help out his financially strapped family. The highly anticipated second season begins 9 p.m. EDT Sunday.
The role has been a game changer for him and AMC, the channel that carries it.
Known for years as the bumbling but lovable dad on Fox's comedy "Malcolm in the Middle," Cranston has shown a darker side on "Bad." While his character -- Walter White -- is still a bumbling type, he's also a man stuck between a rock and a hard place.
Walter has been diagnosed with cancer. His wife is pregnant. Their oldest child has muscular dystrophy. He turns to making the illegal drug to save his family more financial burdens once he's gone.
For AMC, "Breaking Bad" follows in the steps of its critical darling "Mad Men" as a crown-jewel series. But in all this, Cranston remains aware that he's only partially taking credit.
"There's an incredible amount of luck in all of this," he says. "It's a way to approach this whole business, and I tell that to new actors.
"Just accept you're going to have to get lucky sometimes."
A bit of his luck, he says, is in his look. "I'm lucky in that nobody really knows who I am," he says. "Even television reporters who know my work take a second look at me sometimes. I see people nodding and walking past.
"I like it that way. It will make it easier for me in the next role I play."
Cranston shaved his head for the role, defying any ego of trying to look good on camera. He was painfully thin, wrinkled and sickly pale for most of the season.
Walter is no saint, even as he thinks he's doing something bad for the greater good. During the past season, he discovered his cancer was in remission. Maybe, now, he has time to make money another way.
"The news (of remission) created another moral dilemma," Cranston says. "As long as he was imminently dying, he could justify doing this horrible act of making this terrible drug.
"It's very noble in an underhanded way. Now I have to think: 'Do I keep doing this? Can I imagine this didn't happen?' "
At 52, Cranston is in the middle of a career high. Born and raised in the Los Angeles area, he worked in regional theater and then started doing commercials early on.
"Malcolm" was his biggest break and ran for seven seasons. Just months after the affable comedy ended, Cranston came onboard for "Bad," reuniting him with series creator Vince Gilligan. The two had worked together when Gilligan worked on "The X-Files" and Cranston had a guest role on it.
They both knew "Bad" was a gamble. Walter isn't always a likable character, and Cranston was known to most people as a sitcom star.
"I was cast through the normal channels, but Vince was a champion for me. We both realized for 'Breaking Bad' to work that we had to sympathize with the lead character.
"My job was to put myself in his position and to show his shortcomings and his strengths. It's a tough thing."
Casting agents are now looking at Cranston differently. He's getting more scripts, darker roles and opportunities he never anticipated. The Emmy has opened doors and more than a few eyes in Hollywood.
"There again," he says. "I'm just really lucky."
(E-mail Terry Morrow of The Knoxville News-Sentinel in Tennessee at morrow2(at)knews.com.)
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, http://www.scrippsnews.com)
