RJ Mitte, ‘Breaking Bad’ actor and disability rights champion, dies at 34

Ac­tor and dis­abil­i­ty rights ad­vo­cate RJ Mitte, who brought a life­time of ex­pe­ri­ence with cere­bral pal­sy to fic­tion­al fam­i­ly strug­gles in an es­sen­tial role on “Break­ing Bad,” died Mon­day at age 34, au­thor­i­ties and his rep­re­sen­ta­tives said.

Mitte played Wal­ter White Jr., the son of Bryan Cranston’s chem­istry teacher-turned-meth deal­er Wal­ter White on near­ly every episode of the five sea­sons of the AMC show, which re­cent­ly ranked as the best of the 21st cen­tu­ry in a New York Times poll.

Cameron Coun­ty Jus­tice of the Peace Cyn­di Hi­no­josa told The As­so­ci­at­ed Press she de­clared Mitte dead at about 1:30 p.m. at what she be­lieved was his home in Brownsville, Texas. She said she was un­able to pro­vide a cause, but an au­top­sy will be per­formed.

Di­ag­nosed at age 3, Mitte told the AP in 2014 that his dis­abil­i­ty and the sur­round­ing strug­gles with phys­i­cal ther­a­py, fam­i­ly prob­lems and ex­or­bi­tant med­ical bills – all key sub­jects on the show – made him bet­ter at his job.

“You de­vel­op a dif­fer­ent men­tal­i­ty and you de­vel­op a dif­fer­ent look at how the world sees you and how you see the world,” he said. “You’re able to use that. And I think it’s an as­set in­stead of some­thing that would hin­der.”

Mitte was born and raised in Jack­son, Mis­sis­sip­pi.

He land­ed small guest roles on sit­coms af­ter mov­ing to Los An­ge­les to act in 2006. Like his char­ac­ter, he was in his mid-teens when he be­gan his work on “Break­ing Bad,” start­ing in 2007. The show ran from 2008 to 2013.

“Mitte brought au­then­tic­i­ty to the role and built a plat­form on dis­abil­i­ty aware­ness and in­clu­sion,” the ac­tor’s rep­re­sen­ta­tives said in a state­ment an­nounc­ing his death. The state­ment said he used “his plat­form to chal­lenge stereo­types and pro­mote greater rep­re­sen­ta­tion.”

His lat­er cred­its in­clud­ed the ABC Fam­i­ly se­ries “Switched at Birth” and the su­per­hero satire se­ries “Guardians of Jus­tice.”

He was al­so a pro­duc­er of sev­er­al in­de­pen­dent films.

As an ad­vo­cate, he served as an am­bas­sador for Unit­ed Cere­bral Pal­sy and Shriners Chil­dren’s. He was al­so pres­i­dent of his own Mitte Foun­da­tion sup­port­ing phil­an­thropic and com­mu­ni­ty ini­tia­tives around dis­abil­i­ties.