FACE IT: HE’S EXPRESSIVE

Bryan Cranston’s face would be right at home in a cartoon. It just has an especially elastic quality to it.

“I’ve been teased by my family all my life,” said Cranston, whose work on AMC’s “Breaking Bad” earned him the lead actor Emmy last year and a second nomination this year. “I can open up a jar of pickles and make the most excruciating face. . . . I don’t even know I’m doing it.”

From steely stare to heartbreaking anguish and gritty menace, Cranston’s face, as much as any dialogue, helped transform his buttoned-up schoolteacher Walt into a drug lord and murderer.

“There’s one face that seems to be Walt’s own, that I don’t recognize in my life,” Cranston said. “His mouth curls down during some bewildered moments of exasperation or desperation. Perhaps it’s because Walt walks the tightrope of despair and survival.”

-- Josh Gajewski