Cranston often credits luck with his elevation to the varsity. In 1998, he got to play the astronaut Buzz Aldrin on the HBO miniseries
From the Earth to the Moon when another actor showed up too fat for the spacesuit. He landed the role on
Malcolm in the Middle two days before production began, Jane Kaczmarek says, after all the hairy fat guys didn’t work out.” And Gilligan cast him in
Breaking Bad because he recalled an episode of the
X-Files he’d written, in 1998, in which Cranston played a redneck roofer—a part he’d got largely because he auditioned wearing drumstick sideburns and a bushy mustache, which he’d grown to play a redneck mechanic in an indie film called
Last Chance.
The One Who Knocks
