OK, so it’s not that secret, but in this, a week where Bryan Cranston’s final performance as Walter White has been the talk of the internet, it’s as good a time as any to look back on a time when he was…doing voice-over work for anime.
Before Breaking Bad, before Malcolm in the Middle and even before his short run as a dentist on Seinfeld before that, Cranston was a guy who hustled working guest stints on TV series like Touched by an Angel, Sabrina, 3rd Rock From the Sun and an assortment of cop shows.
But it’s his turns on nerd series that are way more interesting. Cranston has been:
- A ship captain on Babylon 5.
- Two rubber-suited villains on Power Rangers (it’s also claimed that the Blue Ranger – Cranston – was named after him).
- The star of an awesome off-canon episode of the X-Files.
- Philip Moses in an episode of The Flash TV series.
- In an episode of Airwolf. Airwolf!
- A regular on the Clerks animated series.
He also, for a while, did voice-over work on anime. Really. Yeah, everyone knows he was Jim Gordon in a recent Batman cartoon, but that was recent. In the 1990s, he appears in some of the best anime of all time!
Sometimes credited under his real name, sometimes credited as “Lee Stone”, Cranston lent his talents to anime including Street Fighter II (as Fei Long), the terrific Macross Plus (as main star Isamu Dyson, at 1:53 in the video above) and, best of all, the classic Royal Space Force, where he voiced Matti, one of Shirotsugh’s loser friends.
So the next time you’re feeling down about Breaking Bad coming to an end, remember, you can always get a partial fix by…getting hold of some bad 90’s TV/great 90’s anime!
Comments
8 responses to “Walter White’s Secret History Of Nerd Acting”
Wasn’t this on IGN a few days ago?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vn8G8dfQt4k is more helpful
header image uses not a photo of walter white, but a 3D image
FUN FACT?
Macross Plus! \o/
This is the one that got him the role in Breaking Bad, from what I remember.. Since Vince Gilligan was one of the writer/producers on X-Files.. Gilligan saw that special quality of a regular guy turned into a sociopath by circumstances outside of his control, in Cranston’s acting.
Watching Malcolm in the middle re-runs still doesn’t sit right… .
I grew up with Power Rangers and it sucked to learn a good, near 20 years later that the guy who played Billy Cranston in MMPR was bullied endlessly by the cast and crew for having a gay affectation (he’s since come out).
No Batman year 1? he was gordan in that
Is the Fei Long thing confirmed?
IMDB seems to disagree…
And yet nobody remembers David Hayter in the live action Guyver movie.