Wikimedia Commons / Gage Skidmore
Veteran film and television actor Bryan Cranston will receive the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Santa Fe International Film Festival on Saturday, Oct. 19, putting him in rarified air alongside such past recipients as Godfrey Reggio, Oliver Stone, John Waters, Tantoo Cardinal, Wes Studi, Shirley MacLaine, Sterlin Harjo and others. Cranston is of course known for his role as Walter White on the ever-popular AMC drama Breaking Bad, but also as a comic actor in television shows such as Seinfeld and Malcolm in the Middle.
"He's somebody who really represents the state so well," SFIFF co-founder and Artistic Director Jacques Paisner tells SFR. "A lot of the work he's done, like with Breaking Bad? He put New Mexico on the map."
Paisner says that in his work travels before Breaking Bad premiered in 2008, New Mexico was relatively unknown.
"I'd tell them it was near Colorado, and they knew that because of South Park," he says. "Then after Breaking Bad...people really knew New Mexico."
Cranston is slated to receive the award at a 7 pm public ceremony at the Lensic Performing Arts Center alongside a screening of his 2015 film Trumbo about screenwriter Dalton Trumbo. He'll also join in conversation with SFIFF's Kirk Ellis, himself a notable screenwriter. Tickets are available now on the Lensic site.
The Santa Fe International Film Festival (née Independent Film Festival) hits its sixteenth year in 2024 and opens on Wednesday, Oct. 16 with The Piano Lesson, the debut film from director Malcolm Washington starring Samuel L Jackson, John David Washington, Ray Fisher, Erykah Badu and Corey Hawkins. For a full breakdown, visit santafe.film.
