Celebs

Here’s Bryan Cranston as LBJ: From ART to HBO

Lyndon B. Johnson film has Cambridge theater roots.

Brian Cranston as the 36th president of the United States. Photo courtesy of HBO

Bryan Cranston has disappeared into the role of President Lyndon B. Johnson in the upcoming HBO film All the Way.

The biopic, based on a Tony-winning play that debuted September 2013 at Cambridge’s American Repertory Theater, focuses on Johnson’s efforts to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964 while mediating an increasingly volitile situation in Vietnam.

Though the magic of film has somewhat enhanced Cranston’s dramatic transformation, this isn’t the first glimpse of Cranston as the“electrifying’’ Johnson.

The ART production earned rave reviewsand moved to Broadway, where it picked up two Tonys in 2014 for Best Play and Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Play.

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It then moved to Broadway for the spring before the final curtain fell in June 2014.

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