Bryan Cranston only eats a meal on set if his scene requires it

The 64-year-old actor admitted very few of his contemporaries like to tuck into food during dinner sequences, but he much prefers polishing off the grub on camera than having to take lunch breaks.

And if there’s no food in his filming, Bryan favours “French hours”, where he’ll just graze on small snacks rather than calling a halt to the shoot.

He said: “I am one of the rare actors who actually eats during dinner sequences. Most actors, I find, will push food around and they'll pretend and take the smallest bite of something. I dive in.

“But if we're not eating [in the scene] I'm very partial to what we call 'French Hours'; 10 straight hours, no break for lunch.

“You pass around munchies - nice, healthy snacks, but very small portions, so it regulates your energy.”

Bryan appeared opposite CGI animals in ‘The One And Only Ivan’ and he admitted the technology posed a huge “challenge” at first but it gradually grew easier as he grew more accustomed to being alone on set.

He said in a recent interview: “[The visual effects] were very challenging to some great degree, and then to some minor degree once you got used to it.

“There were nine or 10 different animals in the movie. None of them were real.

“So all the while that I'm talking with Ivan, the gorilla, it almost seemed like it was a scene, but I was actually performing a monologue... At first, you go, 'Oh my God, this is difficult.' And then you start to get used to it and it feels oddly comfortable."