Bryan Cranston revisits difficult living situation after losing childhood home when actor dad 'walked out'

Bryan Cranston may have been born and raised in Hollywood, but life didn't always come with tinsel town's glitz and glamor.

The Breaking Bad alum was born right in Hollywood in 1956, to mom Annalissa "Peggy" Sell, who was a radio actress, and father Joseph Cranston, an actor and semi-professional boxer.

However, despite having roots, and somewhat of a legacy, in Hollywood, his living situation didn't quite square up with it.

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Bryan, speaking with the Wall Street Journal, recalled his early childhood growing up with "hands-on, involved parents" who had met on the set of the TV sitcom Life with Elizabeth in the early 1950s, and raised their children in a three-bedroom home in Canoga Park.

Their living situation drastically changed however when Bryan's dad, when he was 11 years old, "walked out" from the family for "another woman," and Bryan didn't see him again until he was 22 years old.

"My mother had been fun-loving and sweet, and was devastated and turned to alcohol," he said, noting his parents' divorce came as a complete "shock."

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He swiftly felt a change in himself as well, further sharing: "After he left, I was less confident, more introverted and couldn't figure out what had happened at home or why."

And his personality wasn't the only thing to change. "After the bank foreclosed on our home, my mother sent [my brother] Kyle and me to live with her parents on their four-acre chicken farm in Yucaipa, California, about 2.5 hours east," he revealed, noting it was a one-bedroom home with an outhouse in the barn that they were expected to clean weekly.

Bryan, who also has a sister named Amy, added: "She took Amy, and lived with my father's parents in Canoga Park. That was odd, but she had nowhere else to go."

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He further recalled how he and his brother were suddenly "two L.A. kids" in "the middle of nowhere," but their farm chores ultimately gave them "consistency and a solid work ethic."

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Bryan and his brother spent one year at the rural farm, only seeing their mother once every other month, until the family was able to reunite and live in a two-bedroom rental back at Canoga Park.

Today, he splits his time between an apartment in New York City's the Upper East Side and a home in Los Angeles, with his wife Robin Dearden, who he married in 1989, with whom he shares daughter Taylor Dearden, 33, who is also an actress.