The 2015 ‘Best Picture’ winner Bryan Cranston turned down: “There was a crossover of time”
Bryan Cranston had a number of opportunities open up for him after the success of Breaking Bad, one of the most critically acclaimed shows of all time, but even then, he missed out on an opportunity to be in a future classic.
Breaking Bad was a demanding show that required a tremendous amount of commitment from Cranston up until it reached its finale in 2013, following which there was immense speculation regarding what he would do next. He had smaller roles in acclaimed films when Breaking Bad was still on the air, including Nicolas Winding Refn’s crime thriller Drive and Ben Affleck’s ‘Best Picture’ winner Argo, but the opening up of his time meant that he could take on more sizeable parts in films that allowed him to show his range.
It was only shortly after winning his last Primetime Emmy Award for Breaking Bad that Cranston received an Academy Award nomination for ‘Best Actor’ for his performance in Trumbo, a biopic about the famously blacklisted Hollywood screenwriter Dalton Trumbo.
However, he could have found himself back in the Oscar race because he was offered a role in Spotlight, the future ‘Best Picture’ winner about the Boston Globe reporters who broke the story about the cycle of paedophilia and abuse within the Catholic Church, and while he was interested, he had to turn it down.
“I had to turn it down because I was already committed to [The Infiltrator] and there was a crossover of time,” Cranston explained.
The Infiltrator was a mid-budget crime thriller based on the incredible true story of US Customs Special Agent Robert Mazur, who went undercover to infiltrate the cartels of Pablo Escobar to curb drug smuggling. It’s one of the more underrated films of 2016, and one where Cranston’s versatility was truly beneficial. Since he played a good guy who had to pretend to be a criminal, it was basically an inverse of his character arc on Breaking Bad.
Cranston is the rare actor who got famous late into his career, and his willingness to respect commitments is representative of his strong work ethic. At the same time, it’s also understandable why he chose to make The Infilitrator, as it was a film that likely wouldn’t have gotten funding without a star like him attached. It also offered him an opportunity to play a lead role; given how many years he had spent playing supporting roles in films, the chance to play a protagonist in a summer film likely appealed to him.
Spotlight certainly seemed like a project that was up Cranston’s alley, but there’s also no guarantee which part he would have played. Considering that actors like Michael Keaton and Mark Ruffalo were signed on to the film early on, it’s likely that Cranston would have been in contention for one of the less-significant roles, including those portrayed by John Slattery, Stanley Tucci, Liev Schreiber, and Billy Crudup.
Although it may have been disappointing for Cranston to not get the chance to be in a second ‘Best Picture’ winner, the situation worked itself out for the best. Spotlight is a near-perfect journalism film in which every performance is beautifully calibrated, and The Infiltrator is a very fun, old-fashioned crime thriller that gave Cranston another chance to be a leading man.
