Bryan Cranston: Getting Lost, Finding Your Craft, and Staying Present

Well, speaking of that, I w- I wanna go back to that motorcycle trip that you took all those years ago.

Um, because to me, it really captures something about you and something about your life experience.

Tell us about this, this motorcycle trip you took with your brother back in the '70s.

Well, I was a, a, a restless kid.

Uh, my, my parents had split up when I was 11.

I didn't really have a lot of guidance.

I didn't really know what I was going to do.

I thought I was gonna be a police officer, so I went to college to study police science, and I was doing quite well in it.

And then my second year of college, I took an acting class, and, uh, that changed everything.

From that point on, the idea of becoming a policeman left immediately.

[laughs]

And it was like, how do I become an actor? And, uh, that confusion created this t- this indecision, and I thought, "I don't know what I wanna do." And I talked to my brother, he said he doesn't know what he wants to do either.

Why don't we travel and figure it out? And so we hopped on our motorcycles from Los Angeles, California, and we were gone for two years.

We traveled-

Oh my God

... through all these states, um, up and down the coasts and, and the, through the South, through the North, the Midwest, and, uh, for two years, and we would get, uh, odd jobs here and there.

We'd get jobs in, in coffee shops.

Uh, we'd get jobs in s- uh, carnivals.

Carnivals are a great place.

You can always get a job in a carnival, as long as you have a little bit of experience, and it was, it was terrific.

And so we would make enough money to-

You worked in a carnival.

You worked...

You guys-

Oh, several