Live From the LBJ Library Season 2: Bryan Crantson

As we age, we have a tendency to reduce what we do to a to a manageable size. And there's a whole cadre of things outside of that that we don't do anymore. And I think the challenge is as we age is to not get so narrow with that. Keep expanding as much as you can.

[Music] Welcome to the LBJ Presidential Library in Austin, Texas. I'm Mark Upgrove. As an author, journalist, television commentator, and CEO of the LBJ Foundation, I've had the privilege of talking to some of the biggest names and best minds of our day about our nation's rich history and the pressing issues of our times. Now, we bring those

conversations straight to you. Brian Cranston has had a remarkable acting career. His iconic performance of Walter White in the series Breaking Bad changed the face of television. a performance his fellow actor Anthony Hopkins called the best acting I have seen ever. Tonight I talked to Brian about his career and his many roles and what

Breaking Bad says about America. >> Brian Cranston, welcome. >> Thanks Mark. Good >> good to have you here. >> Thank you. Good to be here. >> So I want to talk to you about your remarkable career starting with how you got in the industry. You are the child of working actors and you saw firsthand

the ups and downs of the industry. Talk about your childhood, what you saw uh of the industry through your parents' eyes. Well, it was exciting when I was really young because being born and raised out in in Los Angeles and my parents were actors, so we would go with them to studios and television sets and movie

sets and you know, play with the props and it was it was an adventure. Um, and it was fun. Uh, but the reality of that is that it's a very difficult business. There is never going to be a shortage of people wanting to be an actor. So there's a tremendous amount of competition in that sense. And you have