Portraying a dying high school chemistry teacher who cooks crystal meth in an attempt to leave his family with enough financial support once he's dead has helped veteran actor Bryan Cranston understand baseball's steroid users a little better.

Both scenarios raise questions of "what if?" that challenge a person's moral character. What if you had only a year or two left to live, how would you spend your final days? What if reaching your lifelong dream of a major league baseball career could be aided by a chemical boost?

Cranston, a lifelong Los Angeles Dodgers fan, has his own hypothetical questions about the direction of his life. He has carved out an impressive acting career that has included parts in movies "Saving Private Ryan" and "Little Miss Sunshine," roles on renowned TV shows such as "Seinfeld" and "The X Files" and perhaps his best-known character, Hal the eccentric dad, in "Malcolm in the Middle."

Now he has landed on the dark and riveting AMC series "Breaking Bad" (to air Sundays at 10 p.m.) and was rewarded with the Emmy award for outstanding lead actor in a drama series last year. Surely, hitting it out of the park as the troubled Walter White is greater than any feats on the baseball field Cranston might have achieved with more motivation, but he still can wonder.

Before Season 2 of "Breaking Bad" premieres March 8, Cranston spoke on the phone last month with ESPN.com's The Life about the series, his love of sports and more.

The Life: First off, congratulations on the Emmy.

Cranston: Thanks, it was a great surprise and a fun night.

The Life: What was that feeling after being nominated before but never winning?

Cranston: Yeah, I kinda got used to not winning [laughs]. ... It was one of ... you know, it was like, "Oh, OK, that's nice to be nominated and be invited to the dance. I didn't get to dance, but that's OK."

And then having your name actually read out is one of those moments when for a millisecond you go through three or four different emotions like, "That name sounds familiar. Whoa, oh my God, that's my name. No, it can't be my name. Was it my name?" And you're, "What? Ooh, ah, ah! ..."

And you're walking up to the stage to give a speech, and you realize "Oh my God, I'm woefully unprepared for this moment." And you just wish that you can put together a sentence that makes sense and that you don't come off looking like a total boob. And then you've always got to remember to thank your wife. That's the most important thing.

The Life: You must have been in the midst of filming the second season of "Breaking Bad," because you looked your best with your shaved head.

Cranston: Yes, skinny bald man. That's an attractive look, isn't it?

The Life: But a good accessory with the statuette, anyway.

Cranston: Yes, I became much better looking with an Emmy in my hands than without.

Walter White (Bryan Cranston) and sidekick Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul) cook up even more trouble in Season 2 of "Breaking Bad." Ben Leuner/AMC

The Life: It's oftentimes such a dark show with graphic nature and subject matter. What's your wife think of this role?

Cranston: When I got the script for "Breaking Bad." I read it cover to cover, and that's rare. Usually you get pilot scripts and you start reading and you go, "Ohhh, boy, all right, it's the doctor who's having his troubles keeping his staff in order. Oh, God."

You go get a cup of coffee, and then you come back and you read a little more. And then you make a phone call, then you read a little more. This one I started reading and just had me right from the top. The first episode, I don't know if you saw our pilot episode, it read just like that: "A middle-aged man wearing only tighty-whiteys and a respirator driving madly in the desert. Inside the RV behind him: two dead bodies sliding back and forth in a slosh of chemicals ..."

And I'm going, "What, what, what the hell is going on?" It had you from that moment all the way through. I finished it; I got on the phone right away and I said, 'Get me in to see him ["Breaking Bad" creator Vince Gilligan].'"

And they said, "Yeah, he wants to meet you. He knows you from "X Files."

And I went, "He does?" ... And I didn't remember him. But he wrote an episode that I did in "X Files." And then I saw his face and I'm like, "Yeah, I do remember that face."

We sat down, we talked, and our 20-minute scheduled meeting turned out to be an hour and a half. And we just batted back and forth what we thought about the character, what we thought about the show. And we hit it off, and from that point on he was my champion to get the role.

I then gave the script to my wife and said, "Before you read this, know that it shoots in New Mexico."

She said "OK" [and read it]. She tossed it back and she said, "S---!"

So she knew it was something I had to do. It was a game-changer in the sense of my career. It allowed me an opportunity to not only start to erase my character, Hal of "Malcolm in the Middle," but explode it, blow it up into little pieces, because you know it completely forced people to see me in a different way. And I'm so grateful for that.

And to answer your question what my wife thinks of it, she -- like most women -- she's attracted to the emotional aspect of it. When my wife on the show, Anna Gunn, and the emotional connection that we make and her finding out about the lies and so ... they're very much sisters in that sense because she's interested in the same things.

The Life: You kind of touched on one of my next questions that after "Malcolm in the Middle," how did you happen into this role, and was it a conscious decision to make this dramatic shift in your next series?

Cranston: The thing is, it's not that cut-and-dry. To get one series to be a success is a wonderful gift that very, very few actors ever get to enjoy. To get two, now I know what Lee Trevino feels like. Being struck by lightning twice. And that's what it feels like. It's like, "What? Are you kidding me? OK ..."

So I've never had -- and I hope I never will develop -- a sense of entitlement that I feel that I'm owed this, or that I deserve this. No one deserves [this]. It's like, "Are you kidding me?" This is such a gift, I am so lucky and blessed to be able to have these opportunities. And I know my fellow actors, that's all we really want is the opportunity to get in the door to show what you can do and to be allowed to perform. And I've been given it, so I'm very grateful.

Cranston had been nominated three times as a supporting actor in a comedy for "Malcolm in the Middle" but won his first Emmy as the lead actor in a drama for "Breaking Bad." AP Photo/Reed Saxon

The Life: You mentioned blowing up your character, Hal. Was there a fear you were going to be typecast as sort of a goofy dad?

Cranston: Sure, oh yeah, absolutely. Not fear in the sense that it was up to me. I would then have to have the courage to reject any kind of goofy dad role. And I did.

So that's hard, because what happens is you've done something, and you've received some attention by it, meaning that you've done pretty well at it, then people are going to come at you with the same kind of thing. And they were. I was offered pilots. [They said] "Oh, it's perfect for him. It's just like the guy in 'Malcolm in the Middle.'" And I had the same reaction you did. I said, "Well ... thank you, but I did that. And I'm not interested."

And some are dumbfounded. "Why? He'd be perfect. No, it's just exactly right for him." And it's like, "No, no, no, he's done that, he doesn't want to do that anymore."

Quite frankly, it would just be redundant because I wouldn't know how to do a sweet, goofy dad any differently than what I did for seven years.

The Life: It's gut-wrenching to watch at times ...

Cranston: "Malcolm"? (laughs)

The Life: No, but he got himself into some trouble, too. Could you see Hal's life spiraling to the point of cooking crystal meth?

Cranston: His life spiraled out of control almost every episode emotionally, yeah.

The Life: "Breaking Bad" is so gut-wrenching and disturbing, but fortunately it tosses in a good amount of humor at times. But is it draining at the end of the day after going through what Walt goes through?

Cranston: Oh, yeah. You know I'm older now. It's emotionally draining, physically. ... It's a very physically demanding show. I'm running all the time and hoisting people up and fighting, oh my God. ... Yeah, it is. And so that's just the logistics of shooting an hourlong drama. It's very demanding, and I have the lead role, which I'm grateful for, but it's more demanding on my time.

So you become very pragmatic in the sense that you protect your weekends. And my weekends become very, very important to me that it's not just a way to get away from shooting the character, but also I need the down time. I need to shut down and rest in order to be ready for Monday.

Because when we go to work, I'm there at least a minimum of 13 hours a day, you know, usually 14, but at least 13. And that's draining. You have to really know how to pace yourself and whatnot.

So you know, [I'm] grateful to do it, grateful I have it, but reasonable in the sense that I know myself and I know what I have to do to prepare for it physically.

The Life: Are there things you can relate to, as a father and a husband, in terms of what lengths Walter is going through for the sake of his family.

Cranston: I think that's the universal question that "Breaking Bad" brings up. And I think it's one that we've been asked before. "If you had a year to live, how would you live it?"

Other people would travel and I would do this ... and Bryan would probably do that. He would just be with family, travel, see some friends, eat at the best restaurants, stay at the best hotels, just experience things and do it as long as you can. ... Travel to everywhere where my friends are and visit with them for periods of time and hopefully stay healthy as long as you can and kick out.

And that's what Walt is doing. Walt is doing what he feels is the best thing that he can do. And that, when given this set of circumstances that he has a year to two to live ... and who knows only a year of that or less is going to be healthy? And his wife is going to clean up after him and empty his bedpan and wipe his drool, but then he still dies and then on top of that, he leaves them penniless. It's just a legacy he doesn't want to leave. It's not something that anyone wants to be known by. And so, with that condition, he makes this desperate decision to use his chemistry background to do the only thing he thinks at the time he can do. And just, for the first time in his life, be selfish. Think of doing something for your family, and then check out.

Yes, it's a very irrational decision for a very rational man. But I believed it, given the set of circumstances, and then what he doesn't realize is the world he's entering into he doesn't have the skill set for this. He's a scientist. Everything is black-and-white, everything is orderly, you put this amount with this, and you have this reaction. ... Well, now he's in a world that has no rules that is filled with people, not of scientists, but people of greed and ego. And they will literally kill you and ... he's woefully underestimated what he has done, and now he has to deal with it.

I think dramatically, that is very appealing. And so you see this fish out of water, this man who is just trying to do something for his family. He knows it's bad. He keeps the blinders on because he knows what he is doing is wrong. He just feels if he can just do it for a little bit, it won't have that much damage. He's fooling himself, of course, but he's hoping that's the case. And then just get out and hopefully his family won't have the hardships that he suffered.

The Life: There are some searing images in "Breaking Bad" -- Walt wearing the tighty-whiteys standing in the desert from the pilot, and [spoiler alert] the supermarket scene early in Season 2. So, will you be upping the ante by Season 3? Are viewers prepared for what's next?

Cranston: How much more revealing can I be? (Laughs.) Literally and figuratively. You know, Jim, it's an interesting thing. When they pitched that, they said, "Well, we can try to ... We'll have a cover, we'll have this. ..."

And I said, "You know what, let's just do it." All I cared about, let's just make sure nobody has their cell phone cameras out and that sort of thing, because we don't want stuff like that to get out.

So once you buy into it and you say, "You know what, this is what the character had to do to try to mask that he lost his mind temporarily, he had to go to that extreme, it made sense. And so OK, I'm willing to do that. And it's a risqué show, so let's do that." So it really wasn't that difficult a decision to make because it just seemed to make sense. So I was willing to do it.

The Life: Switching gears a bit; I've read that before acting, you would have preferred a career in baseball. How far did you get with that?

Cranston: I could have become a professional baseball player, but I fell short in one area, and that hurt greatly.

The Life: What area?