Cindy was my dad’s wife of thirty-five years. The woman he left my mother for, the woman he stole from the husband he’d knocked out cold in the courthouse corridor when I was a boy. In spite of their rocky beginning, Cindy and my dad were actually well suited. I’d gotten along fine with them ever since she and my dad quit drinking. At our wedding Robin moved to give my father a hug, and Cindy, already seriously drunk at our afternoon ceremony, said, “Get your hands off my husband.”
I took my dad aside and I said, “She stops drinking, and you stop drinking, or I’ll never see you again.” I meant it. He knew I meant it. And that was it. They stopped. And they both became born-again Christians.
Now Cindy was facing cancer. Two kinds of terminal cancer, in fact. She didn’t want chemo. She wanted to cure herself naturally, and she found some doctor in Mexico who had promised recovery to patients by “cleaning the blood.”
Robin and I checked out the website. Very shady-looking. The process was illegal in the United States, so the doctor had set up an operation in Tijuana.
I talked to a board-certified oncologist, who told me that there was no hope. One of those conditions was a death sentence. Two? With 100 percent certainty, she had maximum of a year to live.
But my father begged. It’s going to save her life. He was desperate.
Robin and I discussed the matter and we agreed. We knew this transfusion wasn’t going to save her life. And yet Cindy and my dad believed it. I said to Robin: “You know what this is? This is a $30,000 Get Well Soon card.” We gave my dad and Cindy the money, and they were extremely grateful and ventured into her treatment with hope.
Cindy died the following May. Almost exactly one year after her diagnosis.
Son
The whole family was at a Japanese restaurant, celebrating Taylor’s high school graduation. My brother was out from New York with his girlfriend Greta. After we’d returned from our motorcycle trip in 1978, Kyle had gotten a theater degree from UCLA, but he didn’t give the acting life long before he moved to New York to live on an ashram. He now buys and sells college textbooks and lives happily on Long Island with Greta, an actor as well as a hairdresser.
In 2011, Kyle was visiting me on the set of Breaking Bad. Greta was there, too, visiting her brother Steven Michael Quezada, who ably played Steve Gomez, Hank’s solid DEA partner. I think that was the first time on set for both of them. Kyle and Greta basically took one look at each other and whoosh—they were in love.
Both Kyle and Greta are talented, and both wanted to get back into acting, but they needed a reel to showcase their work, a project to get things going. A flash went off. With the newer cameras we could make a movie so much more cheaply than in the Last Chance days. Now, on Taylor’s big night, I turned to my dad and said, “What if you wrote an eighty-to-ninety-page script? Something contained, not big in scope. Something we could get done. I’ll put up the money—thirty, forty thousand dollars. We can get a fresh-out-of-film-school director, someone talented and eager and hungry. We’ll put together a crew of people I know. Kyle and Greta will both have good roles in it. Let’s make a movie together. What do you think?”
Odds were the film wouldn’t be a box-office success. It probably wouldn’t even break even. I knew I’d probably never see that money again. But it wasn’t about that. It was about the experience, working together as father and sons—and Greta. A personal success, something we could be proud of. Something that would bring us closer. I was excited.
My dad smiled wryly. “No.”
No thinking or mulling. Just a no. He had zero interest in such a puny passion project. He only wanted the Holy Grail. He mentioned one of the scripts he’d been working on, a project that would require around $15 million to produce. “I’m going to get that made.”
“But we can do this now,” I said. “While you’re working to finance your other one.”
Again, he politely declined.
My dad was only interested in the home run. Early in my career, I’d learned how to hit singles. He spent his whole life swinging for the fences. Until I knew I could hit a single, I didn’t go for moon shots.
No matter how many times I butted up against the hard fact of who my father was, and wasn’t, it always hurt. There’s so much dark territory between fathers and sons. My dad and I could never bridge that distance. We never reached each other. We never met.
I was shooting Trumbo in New Orleans in the fall of 2014, and I talked to my dad on the phone. He’d had a pacemaker put in the previous Saturday, and his voice sounded weak. He was now ninety, but that was the frailest I’d ever heard his voice. That was the last time I would talk to him.
Robin called me before dawn the next morning to deliver the news.
Months later, we were at my dad’s condo, packing up his belongings, and my daughter Taylor found a scrap of paper. It was dated just three days before he died. In his shaky handwriting, it read: The highlight of my life was when my children forgave me.
I’m glad he knew. He’d blown such a hole in our lives when we were kids, and I’d never truly understood why, but I didn’t need to grasp it intellectually, and I had forgiven him. I had let it go.
Sibling
After Dad was gone, my sister Amy suggested that the three of us siblings go to therapy.
I see a therapist from time to time when I’m feeling edgy or anxious, and Robin and I have been to a couples’ therapist periodically. We have an agreement. If either of us feels like going, the other can’t object. I suggested this system to her before we were even married, and it’s worked for us over the years.
So I said yes to Amy. Sure. Why not? Kyle was in, too.
We hired Robin’s therapist (female), and mine (male), to be in the room with the three of us. The Cranston kids. We talked for a while and then the therapists gave us their sense of things.
“This is quite normal,” they said. “Pretty bad childhood. Not as bad as some. Worse than others. You each found a way to survive. You each found a way to cope. That’s perfectly understandable, perfectly acceptable, perfectly right at the time. The problem is those same coping mechanisms that you used to survive a less-than-perfect childhood will cannibalize your life as an adult and prevent you from growing to your full potential.”
“Amy,” they assessed, “you came into the family when things were starting to go south. You never got proper love and nurturing. Your veneer is you’re perfectly fine without love. You adapted and learned to do without it.”
Amy is six years younger than I am. She was five when my dad left. So no stringing lights for Christmas. No homemade Halloween costumes. None of the good stuff. She only knew my mom lonely and drunk and consorting with unambitious, trying-to-get-by-with-the-least-amount-of-responsibility men. Amy had zero guidance, zero assistance or support in seeking an education. She left high school at sixteen and got her GED; then she moved out on her own and began to support herself, taking college classes at night.
Amy became a licensed vocational nurse and then went on to get her bachelor’s degree. Next was a master’s in education. Now she’s the administrator in a school system with a doctorate in education. Given her history, she looked destined to struggle. And now she has a doctorate. I really don’t know how she did it. She’s a miracle.
But when the therapists assessed her, she recognized herself immediately.
“Yep,” she said. “Yep, yep. That’s me.”
“Bryan,” they said, “you take your pain and you divert it. Instead of working through it, you deflect it. You use humor when you get embarrassed or vulnerable. You use performance to exorcise the demons. You use acting to sort through your emotional baggage. You get love from your work. It’s therapeutic for you. Cathartic.”
“Yep. You’re right.”
It’s true that I use humor to deflect. And it’s true that in acting, there’s safety in vulnerability. It’s the character crying, not Bryan. I found a channel—a use—for the anger and resentment and feelings of abando
nment that came from my childhood. I flush those feelings through my system in my work. Is that always enough? No. I check in with my therapist when I hit a rough patch. I go for a run when I need a release. I’ve found multiple ways to cope. But acting has been my great salvation.
“Now Kyle,” they said, “you’re still holding it, brother. You think it’s your fault. You’re still feeling it.”
“Yep,” Amy and I said.
But Kyle looked at us quizzically. He couldn’t see it. He was still inside of it.
I thought of the ninetieth birthday party we’d thrown our father—just a few months before he died. Amy didn’t make any remarks because she didn’t really know my dad. I said something jokey—like a pretend eulogy—diverting my feelings, true to form. Then Kyle got up and did this whole long, elaborate tribute. He put a lot of time and effort into it.
If you had been in the audience and didn’t know our history, you’d say: “How lucky were these three kids to have a dad like that?” Amy and Robin and I were looking at each other and wondering: Who is Kyle talking about?
In my dad’s later years, Kyle talked to him every day. To the end, he was the dutiful son, attempting to mend the damage that years of absence had wrought. At times, it seemed to Amy and me that Kyle was trying to reinvent a perfect father-son relationship. My brother is a sensitive, thoughtful, compassionate, and hardworking man. He was generous and faithful to the relationship with my dad. He wanted to make it work.
I said to Kyle at one point: “I don’t think Dad is capable. He’s already done all he can do. Think about the movie we offered him! A chance to work with his sons in his chosen field. He was not willing to make it, even to discuss it.”
But Kyle had his own truth. His own memory.
My brother is two and a half years older than me. In our early lives, our experiences were very close: I think of our McNulty Avenue Garage productions. I think of how we supported each other as we stocked other people’s junk and odds and ends to sell. How we clutched each other as our dad went to beat the man who’d cut him off in traffic. How together we were jolted out of our lives and into the country, charged with killing chickens. I think of the epic motorcycle trip, those days we spent riding with no plan, no sense of obligation, the future and the road endlessly open in front of us. We were as close as brothers could be. But there were underlying differences—always. Kyle knew our dad longer while our family was still intact. He knew two and a half years more of the happy times. So Kyle, who was always the most emotional of the three of us, who always felt things more deeply, felt them longer, felt the blow of the loss of those happy times most.
I always thought of my brother at the bow of his ship getting battered, getting the brunt of the storm, and I was in the boat behind him. I had Kyle to guide me and show me the way through. He did things first, and I watched him, and then I did them. And that’s how I learned.
In so many ways, my brother is my savior. I love him. And I owe him a great deal for how my life turned out.
Dad
Robin and I felt that the best thing we could do for our daughter was to let her figure things out and even get into trouble now and then. So long as she always knew we would be there.
When something moderately bad happened to my daughter, outwardly I was always saying: “Oh, honey, I’m sorry.” Inwardly I was shouting: Yes!
You’ve got to fail, or risk failure, to learn, to succeed. You’ve got to be hungry. It seems to me the job for parents is to console the failure but nurture the hunger. That’s how you create independence in children, give them the tools they need to be functioning adults. Our goal, Robin’s and mine, wasn’t to raise a well-adjusted child; it was to raise a well-adjusted adult.
And she’s become just that. Taylor is an actor. And, thank God, she’s good. And she’s refining her craft daily. She just received a major break in her young career, a co-lead role in a TV series. Her modesty and desire for privacy stop me from boasting further. Taylor is fully aware that this is just one job—albeit a good one on a well-written show—and no one can predict its success. Her work ethic and sensibility fill me with pride. After she learned she got the part, she kept her survival job up until the last minute. That’s my girl.
We talk often about acting and storytelling, but we rarely talk about each other’s work. My number one role is to be her father—not her acting coach. All I want to do is support her passion. When we discuss acting, it’s usually about someone else’s work, a play’s merits.
But I suppose some of what I’ve tried to share with my daughter about life has applications in acting. I always encouraged Taylor to wander, to feel it’s okay not to know exactly where you are. Figuring it out builds confidence. Of course I don’t want her to be risky to the point of being dangerous. But go ahead, get lost. It’s okay to be afraid. Being afraid can actually be a sign you’re doing something worthwhile. If I’m considering a role and it makes me nervous, but I can’t stop thinking about it—that’s often a good indication I’m onto something important.
Fatherhood has been such a part.
And it’s been my favorite one.
LBJ
I needed to let Walter White die.
And I thought the perfect way might be a different medium: a play. I asked my agents at UTA’s New York office to look out for something great, and I got a call right away. “I found it, Bryan. The character is on par with Walter White, only on stage. But it’s different. It’s like King Lear.”
The thirty-sixth president of the United States. Lyndon Baines Johnson. In a play called All the Way. Huge role; huge risk. The play would run nearly three hours, and I’d barely have the chance to take a breath. I’d be offstage for about fifteen minutes total. And the character, the man, was big. LBJ was brilliant and cruel and restless and funny and visionary and angry and ambitious and insecure, and more. It could be a tour de force if done right. Or it could be a big turd. Professor Flipnoodle on a national stage.
I read it through, and one scene toward the end of the play stuck with me for days. Johnson is getting ready for bed and he laments, “I have a genuine desire to unite people, but my own people in the South are against me and the North is against me and the Negroes are against me and the press sure doesn’t have any affection for me.
“I could drop dead tomorrow . . . and there wouldn’t be ten people who’d shed a tear.”
His assistant tries to comfort him. “That’s not true, Mr. President.”
“The hell it ain’t,” Johnson snaps.
“People turn on you so fast. When my daddy lost everything, people who’d been glad-handing him treated him like dog shit. Humiliated him to his face in public. And my mother, the way she would freeze him out; that’s what killed him. You know what I think it is? People think I want great power but what I want is great solace; a little love. That’s all I want.”
He was reliving his pain, his father’s embarrassment. His mother’s cold demeanor.
I could imagine it. I could see myself on stage, allowing myself to sink in, letting the audience witness that moment, that pure vulnerability. I could see myself conjuring up that pain. The need. That neediness was at the root of everything LBJ did, everything he was: his quest for power and his flaws and his great gifts.
I thought of my own ego-driven father, my brokenhearted mother. If I did this play, they’d be on stage with me, too. I could imagine tears coming to my eyes. And I could feel the energies and sympathies of the audience. I felt them crying, too.
Then, after I gave the speech, I could imagine myself abruptly changing. Embarrassed, I’d almost slap myself to get rid of the tears. Fuck it. I’d try to cover. Pain is vulnerability for a man—especially a man of that generation. I’d give the audience a glimpse of Johnson’s soul, how he truly felt, then slam the door.
I imagined myself, on my feet, close to the audience, so that I was able to talk very quietly, so quietly that they’d have to lean in. They’d want to lean in. They’d yearn to b
e close. And with a few words, I’d make them feel more alive.
On stage, you and the audience, it’s like sonar. You give them something, and it all washes back to you. Especially with the right part.
And what a part.
This was the part.
It was my part.
I knew I wanted in. But I also wanted to meet the director and writer to make sure they wanted me. And to make sure we were a good fit.
Bill Rausch, the director, and Robert Schenkkan, the playwright, came over to my house. The agency is fond of saying: It’s not an audition. But in truth every meeting is an audition. I’m sure Bill and Robert wanted to see if I was in the ballpark of what they had in mind for LBJ. And, in truth, I wanted to know: Is this going to be a director who is rigid about everything I try? A writer who thinks his every word is chiseled into stone? I don’t work well with that kind of domineering, my-way-or-the-highway type of director or writer. I work better in collaborative environments. Everyone respects each other, challenges each other, and works toward a common goal. The best idea wins.
As part of the storytelling complex, as an actor, I have to be able to know I can ask questions and be heard. I wanted to know if Bill and Robert would allow for that kind of exchange.
In the protocol of theater, there’s far more respect for the writer than there is in film and TV. A history of reverence and laws protect the text; you’re not allowed to change lines without the playwright’s permission. You can’t even cut text unless authorized. No rewriting allowed. In film and TV, you respect the text, but it’s a blueprint, not a bible. Changes are common, especially when stars insist on them. In the theater your director and your writer (if you have the luxury of a writer being present, if he or she is cooperative and not dead) are giving you notes through the previews; they change lines and blocking and make adjustments.
A Life in Parts Page 24