Inside Bryan Cranston's Marriage

Bryan Cranston is part of the furniture in Hollywood nowadays, though the Oscar-nominated, Golden Globe-winning actor was fashionably late to the party, finding fame in his 40s. A native of California, Cranston graduated from Los Angeles Valley College with an associate's degree in police science in 1976, but he decided to change direction entirely after taking one acting class and catching the bug. He honed his new craft at the Granada Theater in the San Fernando Valley and made his screen debut in the 1980s — the decade he met his actress wife, Robin Dearden.

Cranston settled down, wed for a second time (he was previously married to writer Mickey Middleton), and started a family all while he was a working but largely unknown actor. He had been around for years when he shot to stardom playing chemistry teacher-turned-drug lord Walter White in Breaking Bad, which, in hindsight, was definitely for the best. "I'm grateful it happened later, because I was able to develop a sound foundation of my life without any level of fame given to a boy," Cranston told The Guardian. The actor also touched on one of his favorite topics during his interview with the British newspaper: his wife. 

The former Malcolm in the Middle actor has been happily married to Dearden for decades, and he's been more than happy to share the secrets of their success. Let's take a peek inside Bryan Cranston's marriage.

Sparks flew when Bryan Cranston held his future wife Robin Dearden at gunpoint on the set of forgotten '80s show Airwolf, despite the fact that both actors were very much spoken for. "I had a girlfriend at the time. She had a boyfriend," Cranston told Rolling Stone. The actor told the music mag that "the sexual tension was interesting," but they both knew that "nothing was gonna happen" so long as they had partners. "And a year later, she joined a comedy improv class I was in." According to Cranston, he and his now-single former co-star did "as actors do" when they bump into each other out in the world — they greeted with a kiss. This was no friendly peck on the cheek, however. Cranston and Dearden locked lips, and they stayed that way for some time.

"We were both like, 'Wait that was too long, wasn't it?!' And that is really what happened," Cranston said when he and his wife spoke to People. Dearden is apparently of the opinion that she and her eventual husband wouldn't have lasted if they had been free to pursue a romance on the back of their electric Airwolf meeting, and Cranston agrees. "I think it was serendipitous," he told the magazine. "As Robin says, if we had been unencumbered at the time and started dating, she doesn't think that we would have stayed together."

Bryan Cranston surprised Robin Dearden with his pinky toe proposal, but he upped the ante when it came to their actual wedding, pulling a prank at the altar. The two tied the knot in 1989, penning their own personal vows for the ceremony. "When it was her turn, she pulled out a few small index cards and began to read," Cranston told Oprah. "When it was my turn, I took out a single piece of paper — which unfurled three feet to the ground. I'd planned the gag to keep things from getting too serious, and to help everyone relax." According to Cranston, his risky altar joke had the intended effect. The actor added: "While it didn't make grown men roll on the floor in hysterics, I'm happy to say that it did get a laugh."

Putting people at ease during weddings comes naturally to Cranston — because he used to officiate them. When the actor was about 18, he moved to Santa Catalina Island off the coast of Southern California, bunking with a guy called Reverend Bob. When Reverend Bob double-booked himself one day, he roped Cranston in to take his place. Bob filled in some quick paperwork, and, just like that, Cranston was a Universal Life Church minister. The actor married two people in a small plane in what was "the first of maybe 12 ceremonies that I officiated," he told NPR. Years later, Reverend Bob oversaw Cranston and Dearden's wedding.

Bryan Cranston has enough clout to get passion projects off the ground with relative ease nowadays, but he struggled to get 1999's Last Chance into production. "I wrote it for my wife, not having the sense enough to realize that I wrote a screenplay and not a novel," he told Backstage. "Then I realized, Oh my God, I'm not done. It's like giving someone a plate of frozen cookie dough: Oh, I should really make these for you, shouldn't I?" Unfortunately, nobody wanted to help him make it. Cranston pitched Last Chance (in which he and Dearden co-star as a married couple who get terrorized by a drifter in the California desert) all around town, and he was rejected at every turn.

"They either said it didn't have the pizzazz they wanted or they wanted us to attach some big names," Cranston explained. "I finally said, 'I'm tired of that, I'm just going to go out and raise the money and do it myself.' So I did." He did what he needed to do to get Last Chance made, but because of his low profile (this was before he debuted as hapless but loveable dad Hal on Malcolm in the Middle), the film flew under the radar. Years later, Cranston worked with his wife and his daughter in an episode of Breaking Bad. They both had small roles in season 3's "No Más," directed by Cranston.

For Bryan Cranston, one of the few downsides to becoming belatedly famous is that he's no longer anonymous. People watching was always a big part of his prep work when studying for a role, but that went out of the window when Breaking Bad blew up. "I used to be able to work all the time: in a coffee house, in a doctor's office, in an airport, just watching human behavior," he told The Guardian. "When the observer becomes the observed, you can't observe any more." Nowadays, he has to keep a safe distance when he observes strangers, something he and his wife do "all the time."

When Cranston sat down for a candid interview with The Talks, he revealed that he and Robin Dearden love to analyze other couples they see while out and about in public. "You can tell just by body language how familiar they are with each other: if it's a first or second date, if they are leaning in and laughing, their energy is into each other," he said. "If they have been together for 20 years, their energy is back, it is not as attentive. So you sense the energy of someone." 

Cranston is just as observant when it comes to his wife. It's the small things that keep him enamored with Dearden, like the way she "still gets giddy when she sees a firefly," he told Humans of New York.

Bryan Cranston has been seeing a therapist periodically since he was in his 30s, despite the stigma that those around him attached to that kind of thing when he was a kid. "When I was growing up, anyone seeing a therapist was crazy," Cranston told the Financial Times. "It kept people away who could have really used therapy to work through their problems but didn't want to be labeled as crazy." Cranston ignored the naysayers and discovered that reflecting on his life choices in the company of a professional benefited him greatly, and it's apparently done the same for his marriage. "It really helped us," the actor said. "I look at it as a tune-up. If your car starts running rough, are you going to open the hood and fix it?"

According to Cranston, relationship problems can end up "festering like a sore" when left untreated, which is why he and Dearden have a strict policy when it comes to their joint sessions. "If either of us feels like going, the other can't object," the actor revealed in his 2016 memoir, A Life in Parts. "I suggested this system to her before we were even married, and it's worked for us over the years." Cranston would go on to play Larry David's therapist in season 9 of Curb Your Enthusiasm, earning an Emmy nomination for his comedic turn as the exasperated Dr. Templeton.