Bryan Cranston brought an added poignancy to the Alzheimer’s-themed cartoon “Tangles,” because his mom suffered from the disease.
“My mother had Alzheimer’s,” he told Page Six exclusively at a screening of the well-reviewed movie earlier this week. “So I knew what that was like to step in.”
The “Breaking Bad” alum, 70, voices a man whose wife is diagnosed with the progressive brain disorder, along with Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Abbi Jacobson, Samira Wiley and Beanie Feldstein.
“I think everybody in the cast has had experience with Alzheimer’s,” he noted. “Close experiences. And so I knew what to expect from my character when it was diminishing, and to be able to then find those moments when he is — when my character is ultra vulnerable or strong or in denial or all the — you’re going through everything.”
Cranston shared that the disease “doesn’t progress naturally…it really takes you for a loop.”
His mother, Peggy Sell, raised Bryan and his two siblings after their father left the family. She suffered from alcoholism, and the actor did not always have an easy relationship with her.
“There was some contention, there was some stress, and we didn’t always get along,” he told People, but shared that once she was diagnosed, any discord disappeared.
“And what was left is a person loving another person and taking care of them and going for walks and doing simple things. Looking at the sky and feeding the ducks and things like that, that really… Yeah, it simplified the life, but it also neutralized it,” he explained.
She passed away in 2004.
Cranston shared an old photo of his mom in 2019.
“I wanted to show you all a photo of my mother from when she was starting an acting career in the late 1940’s. This glamour shot makes me smile. You looked beautiful, mom,” he wrote alongside it, asking people to consider making a donation to help find a cure.
The Tony winner told Page Six that despite the grim subject matter, making the film was “not depressing at all,” sharing that the movie explores “moments of sadness and moments of despair, but you also have moments of happiness and a real bonding with the family and joy, and so you see a whole spectrum of a human condition before you.”
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