RJ Mitte, actor best known for Breaking Bad, dies aged 34 — SkimNews
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- RJ Mitte died at age 34 in Brownsville, Texas, with his publicist confirming he took his own life; the Brownsville police department said no foul play was suspected and an autopsy will be performed.
- Mitte played Walter White Jr. on all 56 episodes of Breaking Bad starting at age 15, drawing on his own cerebral palsy to portray the son of Bryan Cranston's character.
- Co-stars Bryan Cranston, Aaron Paul, and Dean Norris paid tribute after news broke, with Cranston posting on Instagram that he and Mitte had been texting weeks earlier about meeting for lunch.
- Days before his death, Mitte was promoting his new film Talking to Strangers, billed as a "romantic tragedy," and had appeared on the Joe Vulpis Podcast reflecting on his Breaking Bad experience.
- Off-screen, Mitte served as an ambassador for United Cerebral Palsy and president of the Mitte Foundation, and in a 2015 Guardian interview said disabled actors must "show the inner strength that people have."
- Mitte was born in 1992 and raised in Mississippi by adoptive parents, learning he was adopted at age eight when a step-brother told him.
Why it matters: Mitte's death at 34 — confirmed by his publicist as suicide — cuts short the career of one of the few actors with a visible disability to anchor a prestige drama, and his co-stars' tributes underscore how closely he was identified with Walter White Jr. The news arrives while he was actively promoting a new film, complicating any read of his state of mind in his final days.
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