When he was young, Bryan Cranston tagged along with his actor-father, Joe.

"I couldn't quite put my finger on it but I felt special when I was at a studio or on a set," he said. "I still feel special sitting here at Fox. There's history here and it's magical. You create something out of something that was once just a thought. ... Something that will move people, hopefully -- entertain them, make them sad, make them angry even..."

Make them laugh.

That's what Cranston does as Hal, the overwhelmed dad on Fox's "Malcolm in the Middle." The popular sitcom about a dysfunctional but loving family is now in its third season.

Cranston wasn't on the Fox lot to work on his show, which is filmed with a single camera on sets and locations rather than in traditional sitcom style -- four cameras with an audience. He was taping a guest spot on Fox's "The Best Damn Sports Show, Period," touting a special episode of "Malcolm" that followed the network's Super Bowl coverage.

He prefers baseball, but was happy to boost his series. His Super Bowl wish was for "a tied score until the last minute, then it's over like that and we go right to 'Malcolm in the Middle.' It would be fun to see a big upset."

His wish came true -- well, most of it. The New England Patriots' 20-17 victory over the St. Louis Rams was followed by a big post-game show, and East Coast viewers didn't get to see "Malcolm" until almost 11 p.m.

Fond memories

The 45-year-old Cranston, who was born in Los Angeles, has fond memories of portraying a child recovering from an accident in a United Way commercial when he was 8. But many years passed before he realized how much he wanted to be an actor.

A shy and introverted teen-ager, he was at the top of his police explorer class in junior college, seemingly destined to become a detective. Advised to establish a more rounded curriculum before entering a university, he joined an acting class.

His first scene involved kissing a pretty girl. Shyness fell away. Confused, he took off on a motorcycle, along with older brother, Kyle, traveling the country picking up odd jobs for "gas and food money." Camped out during a rainstorm in the Blue Ridge Mountains, he was so absorbed reading a book of plays that he lost all sense of time.

"I just had this cognition that acting is what I should do. This is where I belong. I realized I had to make a distinction between police work, something I was good at, and something I love. I decided to go into acting hoping I would get good at what I loved."

With no ambition to be anything more than a working actor, Cranston has persevered. He and his actress-wife, Robin Dearden, met on the set of the action series "Airwolf." A couple of summers ago, he wrote and directed "Last Chance," a low-budget movie about the dynamics of a marriage in which they co-starred. They have a 9-year-old daughter, Taylor.

"Acting for a regular journeyman like myself is a series of breaks and getting lucky," says Cranston. He played a good guy on the soap opera "Loving," Jerry Seinfeld's dubious dentist on "Seinfeld" and astronaut Buzz Aldrin in the miniseries "From the Earth to the Moon."

"Malcolm" creator and executive producer Linwood Boomer admits that in the pilot, Hal's character was underwritten and proved hard to cast. Cranston auditioned at the last minute, seated on a little folding chair with set construction going on around him.

"I actually fell out of my chair laughing, what he did was so rich," says Boomer. "It was like he was building a rocket ship in his head, there was so much life going on."

The script implied that Hal was a big, hairy blue-collar type. Cranston, reasonably slender and not unnaturally hirsute, has shaped the character into a more middle-class man who happily and hilariously balances his "bombastic" wife, Lois, played by Jane Kaczmarek.

"I started to think of the opposites of her -- softness, sensitivity, etherealness, whimsy, boyishness," says Cranston, noting Hal's tendency to act startled -- a feminine trait and a pretext for a lot of clever physical comedy.

Hairy back

Nudity and the hairy back, ripe for the razor, still flummox him a bit. "They glue on yak hair because it's longer than human hair, so the curly bit doesn't mat down." He often tries to convince the producers there must be periods of time when the hair thing can be left alone so he can avoid three hours in makeup. "But the criterion is, 'Is it funny?' ... So I usually go along with it."

"I like Hal. ... There's a lot I can learn from him. I think I can learn his patience and his willingness to be openly sensitive," says Cranston, who seems entirely amiable but says he's aggressive and work-driven.

Cranston also likes the "insane energy" of the four young actors who play his sons: Frankie Muniz (Malcolm), Christopher Kennedy Masterson (Francis), Justin Berfield (Reese) and Erik Per Sullivan (Dewey).

"I'm almost like a grandparent. I deal with it at work, then I just go, 'OK. I'm going home now."' He believes his situation as a real-life father generates respect that allows him to rein them in when they get too boisterous or to offer advice when needed.