'The Infiltrator' New York Premiere (Photo : Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images)
Bryan Cranston is back in the drug world but this time he will be playing as protagonist. After his highly praised performance as a high school chemistry teacher turned meth kingpin in the TV series "Breaking Bad," Cranston plays an undercover agent who goes after Colombian cocaine lord Pablo Escobar via his Miami money laundering network in "The Infiltrator."
According to EW, Cranston justifies the character which he plays may it be real-life people like President Lyndon B. Johnson, Dalton Trumbo, or undercover agent Robert Mazur in "The Infiltrator."
"When I start taking on a character, I basically put it in this analogy," Cranston tells Entertainment Weekly and PEOPLE editorial director Jess Cagle in the most recent episode of The Jess Cagle Interview. "I go out on a limb, I go way out on a limb. I ask my directors, 'When you start to hear the limb crack, just pull me back a little bit.'"
The four-time Emmy winner and 2014 Tony winner says for him, as an actor, to figure out where the sweet spot is in that character's performance, he has to go too far so that he knows for sure that's too far. "So then I can come back, I get my boundaries. But if I just take baby steps toward it and stop at some point, I'll never really know if I could have gone further," he adds.
Cranston was promoting the film in Miami where he told AFP news, "Pablo Escobar is legendary. He is an iconic figure and there is something of a taboo nature about him. He brought a lot of fear and mistrust on one hand, and yet he did some remarkably good things in his home country," Cranston said.
"So lots of people were conflicted about how they felt about him. But in the end, his badness outweighs his goodness and that makes for good stories," the actor said.
It's a familiar theme for Cranston. He became a global sensation with his performance as the once mild-mannered but ultimately tyrannical Walter White in "Breaking Bad."
"The Infiltrator" is in theaters now.
Check out the Cranston's talk in Live with Kelly, July 11 2016.
