Bryan Cranston Shares Secret to His 34-Year Marriage: ‘Marry the Right Person’ (Exclusive)
"She's a lovely lady," Cranston tells PEOPLE of his actress wife Robin Dearden, with whom he tied the knot in 1989
Bryan Cranston is revealing the secret to making his 34-year marriage to wife Robin Dearden work.
Speaking exclusively to PEOPLE at the London premiere of his latest film Argylle on Wednesday, the actor, 67, opened up about spending more than three decades with his wife, 70, and his desire to have more quality time with her.
“Marry the right person,” Cranston tells PEOPLE of the secret to his relationship with actress Dearden, whom he married in 1989. “I think there are five things that you should look for in a mate. Whatever those five things are to you, you need those five things. After that, let it go. We’re never going to be completely alike on everything.”
Cranston continues, “Someone said, ‘You don’t go shopping with your wife?’ I go, ‘No! Why would I do that? I don’t like it!’ I just don’t like it and she doesn’t like things that I like to do either.”
The couple, who shares a 30-year-old daughter called Taylor, first met on the set of the 1980s TV series Airwolf and tied the knot on July 8, 1989.
Related: Who Is Bryan Cranston's Wife? All About Robin Dearden
Meanwhile, Cranston also talked to PEOPLE about his decision to take a year off from acting in 2026, and how spending more time with Dearden was part of the driving force behind it.
“At some point I want to slow it down,” the Breaking Bad alum says. “I want to have more life experiences, I want to travel, I want to feel it. When you’re working, I’ve been working for the last 25 years nonstop and that’s not real life. And I really do feel like I want more real life experiences. I want to adjust the relationship that the industry has with me and also that it’s created for my marriage. I just want to kind of level that out and experience something new.”
Asked if spending more time with his wife was part of that, Cranston responds, “Yes! I like her. 35 years married, she’s a lovely lady.”
Until then, Cranston is very much focused on work, including promoting Argylle, the upcoming spy thriller in which he stars as villain Ritter.
Sharing how much he relished the role, Cranston tells PEOPLE, “I enjoy being a villain. It’s so much fun. It’s just so much fun to be able to determine the fate of someone else’s world and life. It’s like, you know, I thought I liked you but I don’t, you’re gone! And when I say gone, I mean gone.”
As for what attracted him to the flick, which also stars Henry Cavill, Dua Lipa, Samuel L. Jackson, Ariana DeBose, John Cena, Cranston says it was director Matthew Vaughn who got him to sign on the dotted line.
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“He’s crazy, in a wonderful way, and audacious and bold and he never plays it safe and I like that kind of film-making,” Cranston explains to PEOPLE. “I like taking chances. Now there are other stories where you want a small story, an intimate story about relationships, this is not that! This is big, broad, have fun, laugh, be silly. It was so much fun to shoot and it’s even more fun to watch.”
The movie follows Elly Conway (played by Bryce Dallas Howard), a reclusive author of a series of best-selling espionage novels, as she finds herself accompanied by a real-life spy (played by Sam Rockwell) while the two race "across the world to stay one step ahead of the killers as the line between Elly’s fictional world and her real one begins to blur," according to a synopsis.
Argylle arrives in theaters nationwide on Feb. 2.
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