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Rise to Fame
Ten years of background parts and small TV roles, then Breaking Bad. He read the pilot at the low point of his career, not sure how he'd make rent that month. Vince Gilligan originally wrote Jesse Pinkman to die in season one, but changed his mind after watching footage of Paul and Bryan Cranston together. That decision produced three Emmy wins for Supporting Actor (2010, 2012, 2014), the first for a performance that technically wasn't supposed to make it past season one.
In the Spotlight
Since Breaking Bad ended, his track record is honest about the limits of a single defining role. El Camino (2019) gave Jesse Pinkman a proper goodbye. Westworld gave him two seasons as a lead before the show got cancelled. Dos Hombres, the mezcal brand he co-founded with Bryan Cranston in 2019, is the more durable project. Ash came out in 2025. Whether anything else sticks the way Breaking Bad did is a different question.
Side Notes
He showed up to a Price Is Right taping at 4:30 a.m. in 2000, drank six Red Bulls from a Big Gulp, and screamed 'You're the man, Bob!' His last name was Sturtevant then. He came within $132 of winning the showcase and went home empty. The clip resurfaced when Breaking Bad made him famous, and watching it explains something about why he was right for Jesse Pinkman. He was born a month premature in his parents' bathroom in Emmett, Idaho. He legally changed his surname because Sturtevant was a mouthful. The Price Is Right footage is the best origin story he could have.