After becoming a household name in Breaking Bad, Bryan Cranston can do pretty much anything he likes. Which he admits is a bit of a problem. "I don't want to appear smug, but I don't need a job," he laughs. "I've been really poor, foreclose-on-your-house poor. And I've been rich. Rich is better. But I'm just now starting to get used to the hour of fame. I haven't been able to let the dust settle yet."

Trumbo is based on real-life eventsTrumbo is based on real-life events

When asked if he'd like to revisit his character Walter in Breaking Bad, he says, "I don't have a yearning to go back into that world, because we just covered it completely I think. What I'd like to revisit maybe is Hal in Malcolm in the Middle. It's been 10 years since we went off the air, and it'd be fun to pick up that guy's clothes again and be fun and sweet and adorable and hapless and clueless and afraid of everything!"

For his new film Trumbo, Cranston has already picked up the rumblings of an Oscar nomination. It's the story of screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, who was blacklisted in Hollywood for refusing to participate in the Un-American Activities hearings in the 1950s. Cranston thinks that Dalton is "emblematic of oppressed people throughout our history, whether it's African-Americans or Latinos or, in this case, communists. In America, there was a time when fear-mongering was tremendously effective. We are continuing to relive it."

These themes are what drew him to the project. "I'm very interested in how ideas become contagious, and especially how very bad ideas become contagious," he says.

And he wants to keep pushing buttons with his work. "The only failure in art is when you move someone to no emotion whatsoever," Cranston says. "I'd rather have people fiercely angry with me so long as they're moved to some emotion. Even if the emotion was off-target, even if I was trying to move the audience one place and they go another. You missed, but at least they felt something."

Watch the trailer for Trumbo here: