The chemistry of a moral dilemma

Bryan Cranston brings understanding to his 'Breaking Bad' character

"Walter is a guy who has very common flaws. To step into his shoes was a comfortable fit," Bryan Cranston says. (Doug hyun/amc via associated press)

NEW YORK - AMC's "Breaking Bad" dares to be bleak, heartbreaking, shocking, and bitterly funny, hurtling its milquetoast hero into situations he couldn't have imagined.

Walter White is a high school chemistry teacher who learns he has terminal cancer and decides to make and sell crystal methamphetamine to provide for his family. Cooking meth is deplorable. But it can mean big money, fast. The network also took a gamble by casting as the plagued Walter White an actor best-known for playing the goofy, distracted dad on "Malcolm in the Middle" - Bryan Cranston.

Inhabiting this character wasn't hard, says Cranston. "Walter White is a guy who has very common flaws. To step into his shoes was a comfortable fit," he explains.

But there was more to Walter than shoes. "When I visualized him, I thought he should be colorless," says Cranston. "So we took out all the ruddiness in my face. I put a brown rinse in my hair, to take out the red highlights." He accessorized with glasses and a nerdy Ned Flanders mustache. "I went to the costume designer and said, 'I think everything he wears should be taupe and sand. I think this man should blend into the scenery.' "

Cranston also gained 15 pounds, to give Walter a doughy waistline. (For later episodes, he dropped the excess weight as Walter undergoes cancer treatment.)

"Here's a man," says Cranston, "who could have done a lot in his life: a high-six-figure income at a pharmaceutical firm of his choice. Maybe share in a Nobel prize. But he didn't reach for the brass ring, and he has lived a life of regret for 25 years. Then he gets the diagnosis.

"But the irony is, ever since he got that death threat, he's felt more alive than ever. He's fed up and ready to take charge. And given his set of dire circumstances, for him to use what he knows to do what he does - it seems to make sense."

In an interview, the 51-year-old Cranston is hearty and outgoing, and exudes the satisfaction of an actor who works steadily. But long ago he moved beyond that mark of success. For one thing, he can boast a special status as one of the recurring kooks on "Seinfeld": dentist Tim Whatley.

Then he got the hit comedy "Malcolm," which wrapped in 2005 after seven seasons, leaving him in the grateful position "where you don't have to work for the sake of working, where you have the ability to say no."

He said an enthusiastic yes to "Breaking Bad." He had gotten the role by chance, he says, after appearing in a play in Los Angeles directed by "Seinfeld" chum Jason Alexander. That performance was seen by "Breaking Bad" creator Vince Gilligan, whom Cranston met a decade earlier while guest-starring on "The X-Files," where Gilligan was a writer-producer.

Gilligan has surrounded his leading man with a fine supporting cast, including Aaron Paul as Jesse Pinkman, a recent washout from Walter's chemistry class who, now part of a meth ring, becomes his business partner.

Jesse and the man he still calls "Mr. White" quickly bond, blundering through their caper with one cruel setback after another. Never does the series glamorize the drug trade - or let Walter off the hook for his ill-advised venture.

"We're not looking for people to accept what Walter White is doing," says Cranston. "We're looking for them to understand."

For Cranston, the hardest thing to understand was the chemistry.

"I hadn't studied it since high school," he says with a laugh. "So I hung out with a chemistry professor to reacquaint myself with what a periodic table is, and an Erlenmeyer flask, and all that stuff."

Did he really learn to cook meth?

"Yeah, I did," says Cranston, looking surprised to admit it. "In fact, we had DEA chemists on our set as consultants. I wanted to be sure how a chemist would hold this beaker or measure that ingredient, and so we're going through the whole process. There is a specific way to go about it, and I did learn.

"But I've forgotten already," he hastily adds, "and I have absolutely no interest in repeating it."