Bryan Cranston won critical acclaim for his roles on Malcolm In The Middle and Breaking Bad, but one of his best performances came in World War II epic Saving Private Ryan. Cranston had a storied career before Breaking Bad made him a household name, with recurring roles on sitcoms including Seinfeld and The King Of Queens alongside voiceover work on Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, and English-dubbed anime like Armitage III and Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie.
The role that first put Bryan Cranston on the map was playing Hal on the Fox sitcom Malcolm In The Middle. His performance as the hapless patriarch of the show’s lovably dysfunctional family earned Cranston several Primetime Emmy nominations and established him as a brilliant comedic performer. After Malcolm In The Middle came to an end, Cranston wasn’t away from the small screen for long before his role as Walter White in AMC’s Breaking Bad beckoned. Cranston received widespread acclaim for his performance as the chemistry teacher turned drug kingpin and took home a total of four Emmys for Outstanding Lead Actor In A Drama Series over the hit drama’s five seasons.
More recently, the Breaking Bad star has proved particularly talented at taking on biographical roles. Critics praised Cranston’s performance as former U.S. president Lyndon B Johnson in the HBO TV movie All The Way and playing screenwriter Dalton Trumbo in the biopic Trumbo earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor. One performance Bryan Cranston doesn’t get a lot of recognition for is his role in Steven Spielberg’s award-winning Saving Private Ryan – in fact, it’s probably the most underrated performance of his whole career.
It’s easy to why Cranston’s Saving Private Ryan role is overlooked. He played the one-armed, unnamed war department colonel who appears at the beginning of the film and makes the case for rescuing Private Ryan (Matt Damon) from behind Nazi lines to his superiors. He’s only in the film for a couple of scenes and utters just a handful of lines, but what Cranston does with his brief time on screen is breathtaking and a testament to his talents as an actor.
Another eye-catching performance in Saving Private Ryan came from Giovanni Ribisi as army medic Irwin Wade. Though they didn’t share any screen time in Saving Private Ryan, Ribisi and Bryan Cranston would go on to star in the Amazon Original crime drama Sneaky Pete which Cranston co-created with David Shore.