Off The Leash

he quote seizes your attention the moment you reach his MySpace page: "Drama is life with the dull bits cut out." RJ Mitte borrowed that bon mot from his manager, and it's a curious choice. Certainly this 16-year-old is intimately familiar with the concept of drama-at least, the heightened, Hollywood kind. After all, he's been a cast member of an edgy, acclaimed cable drama for over a year. But away from the soundstage, his life is hardly dull.

RJ, who has cerebral palsy (CP), plays the similarly afflicted son of a terminally ill high school science teacher-turned-methamphetamine dealer on the AMC series Breaking Bad, which debuted last January. Offscreen, the rock-climbing, paintball-playing, four-wheeling outdoorsman displays a penchant for broken bones ("If you had a couple of hours, I could tell you how many," he quips) and charitable acts (he's helped rebuild Katrina-devastated homes in his native Louisiana).

He's also childhood pals with Ainsley Lollar, the 2007 Miss Teen Louisiana, and counts Disney 'tween dream Miley Cyrus as an acquaintance.

Happen to spot any "dull bits" in need of excision?

If anything, RJ's professional endeavors struggle to keep pace with his outsized personal life. His handlers needn't worry on that front, however. On March 8, Breaking Bad returns for a 13-episode second season, not long after RJ prompted talk of an Emmy nod for his work on Season One. (His TV dad, Malcolm in the Middle patriarch Bryan Cranston, won the Best Actor Emmy in September.)

RJ's seeming overnight success happened, as these things often do, by chance: For most of his young life, the affable teen-whose full name is Roy Frank Mitte Jr.-was holding fishing poles, not scripts. "Let me lay this out for you," he says, elongating each syllable for emphasis. "I have never done acting in my life until two and a half years ago. If it wasn't for my little sister, I would probably be on a boat somewhere with my uncle."