How to Master Acting | Bryan Cranston's 16-Minute Guide to Success

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 4 Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series. He's Bryan Cranston, and here are his top 10 rules for success.

I started working in this business in 1979, so I've been doing it for 32 years about.

And you got steady work, you had lots of gigs.

Yeah.

But the last 10 years have been just crazy.

You know, 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 a while, but— I'm glad it's here.

Well, 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'm supposed to be doing.

An actor is supposed to create a compelling, interesting character that serves the text.

You present it in the environment the environment where your audition happens, and then you walk away, and that's it. Everything else is out of your control, so don't even think of it, 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. And 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 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 than 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 Mountain's 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 underwear 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? That was page 1. And it took off from there. And so it was one of 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 longer I waited, I knew that every actor in Hollywood would want to be a part of it.

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, um, 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 4 wooden posts and a roof and a picnic table at this rest stop. No one else was there. It's 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 camp. On this slab of cement. And it stayed there for 6 days because it didn't stop raining.

Wow.

And over the 6 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 it 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 all of a sudden it was nightfall. It was dark. Oh my God, 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.

Amazing.

I love 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, as opposed to getting trapped into something I happen to be good at but 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. Oh, we're 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, it's like, oh no.

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 have a tendency to come forward and put their emotional arms around you.

As an actor, you need to study human behavior, and 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 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, "No, no, I don't want to be, I don't want to be a star, I don't want to be this." Let all that go and just again philosophy, let it come in, let it come out. 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 just let it flow. And she had a point that was very interesting, to accept and embrace an actor's arrogance. And at first you go, arrogance? 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, 3 seconds left, I want to take the shot, or whoever's best to take the shot. You take the shot. Well, we'll do all we can to make sure that you get your— 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. Now takes a chance.

You have to have a healthy dose of luck to become successful. That's just the way it is. Um, 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 3 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 have to just do your work, 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 control, 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 gonna be the one picking the cup. So— [SPEAKING CHINESE] The fate of my hands lies in your decisions. Can you point to one of the 4 cups?

How much is riding on this? Everything. Everything.

That one?

Yes.

Oh my God, that was a good guess. I saw your reaction. Oh! 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, of course not. —the real curiosity is— What would happen if that went through the hand?

Oh.

See how it 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, it looks like it's actually going in, but there's no blood. Oh.

No way. Oh, you.

Oh, God.

That is through your hand.

There's no blood. Why? Good. Good. Just pull that. Good. Just pull. Oh, pull, pull.

It went through your hand. It feels like it went through your hand. This is not a glove. That doesn't retract. Oh, my God. Wow, wow, that's the craziest thing I've ever seen in my entire life, obviously. Um, I can't even. You're out of your mind in the most, uh, you're just out of your mind, um, in the most beautiful way, um, possible. My God. Thank you so much for watching.

I made this video because Orian 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 which of 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. Continue to believe and I'll see you soon.

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 the 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 responsibility of an actor is to be truthful in how you portray that. So 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 I know from personal experience in my family that the chemotherapy 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 10 days. Hard to do that healthy. Yeah, but I did it carefully. I cut off my right leg. Right.

And this is a prosthetic now.

You certainly got down that hill.

16 pounds, that was easy.

You're like, just put it in a bag, put it in the freezer.

I'll attach it later.

Um, so no, I, I measured the time between when I would have my shirt off, you know, in a shower scene or something, uh, before the weight loss, and then when I was going to have my shirt off again, uh, after the chemotherapy. And, um, it was, it was 16 days or 10, 10 days so that I, I had to quickly Drop that weight.

I can tell you 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 It might be a 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 that work. And it's always about the writing. I know that as sure as I'm sitting here. 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? Does it make a social statement? What— where 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 that'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 my hometown. So I want to know, how'd you like it? Well, did you have fun there?

Yeah, I'd go and visit your mother once in a while. Whoa, that was a little mean. That's—