Bryan Cranston Is Retiring From Acting (In, Um, 2026)

Bryan Cranston, who gave one of the all-time great performances in TV history as Walter White on Breaking Bad, is retiring from acting… in 2026.

“I want to change the paradigm once again,” he told GQ UK. “For the last 24 years, [Cranston’s wife] Robin has led her life holding onto my tail. She’s been the plus one, she’s been the wife of a celebrity. She’s had to pivot and adjust her life based on mine. She has tremendous benefit from it, but we’re uneven.”

He added, “I want to level that out. She deserves it.”

The multi-time Emmy winner plans to shut down his production company, sell his stake in Dos Hombres Mezcal (which he co-owns with Aaron Paul), and move away from the United States, maybe to France. “I want to have that experience,” he explained. “I want to go for day trips and have the fire in the fireplace and drink wine with new friends and not read scripts. It’s not going to be like, ‘Oh, I’ll read and see what I’m going to do.’ No, it’s a pause. It’s a stop. I won’t be thinking about [work]. I’m not going to be taking phone calls.”

There’s plenty of Cranston to go around until his retirement, however: he’s in Wes Anderson’s Asteroid City, as well as Argylle, alongside Henry Cavill and Dua Lipa, and the inevitable Malcolm in the Middle reunion. Someone better get the ball rolling on the Willie Nelson biopic, too. The clock is ticking…