Bryan Cranston Admits Dalton Trumbo Could Be Kind of an 'Ass'

As his Emmy award-winning run on AMC’s beloved drama Breaking Bad was entering its second season, Bryan Cranston told The AV Club, “I love playing pompous asses. I think I would like that on my tombstone: ‘He was the definitive pompous ass.’”

His meth-cooking cancer patient Walter White could certainly be an entitled jerk. But what about Dalton Trumbo, the legendary (and legendarily blacklisted) screenwriter behind such classics as Spartacus and Roman Holiday, played by Cranston in the new biopic Trumbo? Was there any pompous assery in Trumbo?

“Oh, God yes,” Cranston told us in a recent interview, which you can watch above. “Even he his daughters would say, 'Oh God, he was an ass,’ many, many times. He would even say, 'Oh, I’ve been an ass.’

"Because someone who is that prolific at holding court – he loved to have people around him. [He’d say], ’Listen to what I have to say. My opinion is important.’ You’re going to step into it. You’re going to make a fool of yourself. And he did, several times.”

Related: Bryan Cranston Delivers Best (Film) Performance Yet in 'Trumbo’

Trumbo, directed by Jay Roach, follows the scribe’s struggle to maintain a career in Hollywood after he’s imprisoned for refusing to testify in front of the government’s Communist-interrogating House Un-American Activities Committee.

Trumbo subsequently won (but could not accept) two Oscars for films he wrote during that time under a pseudonym, Roman Holiday and The Brave One, and today is considered one of the greatest screenwriters/asses ever to work in the business.

Trumbo opens Nov. 6. Watch the trailer: