Bryan Cranston is "grateful" he wasn't famous as a young adult.

The 61-year-old actor has become a household name with his roles in television shows such as 'Malcolm in the Middle' and 'Breaking Bad', and has said he's thankful his career didn't take off until he was older as he was able to create a "solid foundation" throughout his 20s without fame getting in the way.

Asked how he thinks his life would have turned out if he was famous in his youth, Bryan said: "I'm grateful it happened later, because I was able to develop a sound foundation of my life without any level of fame given to a boy. One of the traps in being a celebrity is, there's a certain curfew that I have in my mind. If I'm out in public, every time I feel it, I look at my watch to see what time it is, and almost invariably, it's around 10:30 pm. I'm starting to feel a waning of the evening. The energy has changed. I attribute it to alcohol. My wife and I squeeze each other's legs, and it's time to leave."

And the 'Power Rangers' actor - who has 24-year-old daughter Taylor with his wife Robin Dearden - also admitted that before he became a Hollywood star, he would go to shopping malls and make "undetected observations" of people.

When asked by The Guardian newspaper if he enjoys "people watching", the star said: "Of course. I'm too curious not to. It's a prerequisite to being an actor.

"[Fame] makes observation more difficult, because once the observer becomes the observed, behaviour changes. But fortunately, it didn't happen to me in my 20s. It happened to me in my 40s.

"I had 40 years of undetected observations. I would go to shopping malls with a newspaper and I would hold it just before my eyes. If I felt a couple was arguing or something, I'd go and sit near them and, quote unquote, read the paper, but I was just watching their behaviour."