The 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."

Opportunity Knocks

Four years ago, RJ's sister Lacianne-a spirited redhead described by their mother, Dyna, as a cross between Nicole Kidman and Lucille Ball-chatted up a stranger during a family visit to a Houston water park. Introducing herself as a former talent agent, the stranger urged Dyna to contact her manager friend in Los Angeles about putting the 2-year-old in commercials.

That manager, Addison Witt, initially told Dyna that while Lacianne was too young for him to represent, he would coach her for meetings with potential agents. During one such meeting, agent Debra Manners noticed the darkly handsome RJ, who'd tagged along with his sister and mother. Manners asked Dyna why she hadn't brought the 13-year-old into the meeting. "I said, 'Well, he doesn't know anything about acting-it's never been an interest,'" recalls Dyna. "She said, 'No, I want him, too.'"

RJ may not have harbored acting ambitions, but he wasn't about to dismiss the opportunity. "I decided, 'Hey, it seems fun; it would be a good day job.' I didn't have anything else to do, [and] I could meet a lot of cool people."

Dyna allowed Manners to sign her son after Witt agreed to manage and coach him. "When I first met RJ," says Witt, "the first thing I saw aside from [the fact that] physically he was a striking person, [was] that he was very witty and jumped right into the conversation. That's an unusual characteristic. I thought, 'Well, I see this; other people are going to see it, as well.'"

Relocating with his mother and sister to L.A., RJ soon secured background work-portraying a jock, not a disabled student-on episodes of Cyrus' hit Disney Channel series, Hannah Montana. Other extra roles followed on the Showtime dramedy Weeds, the CW sitcom Everybody Hates Chris and the WB family drama 7th Heaven-as well as the films Drillbit Taylor, Epic Movie and The Jane Austen Book Club.

His relatively mild form of CP may have enabled him to blend in with other extras, but RJ and his representatives never hid his disability. "CP comes in so many different forms than everybody expects," he says of his condition. "No one notices you have it until you say, 'I have CP.' If I was on an interview. I wouldn't just go in there and sound a bit different. They [might] think, 'Is this kid hard of hearing?' I would say, 'If my agent didn't tell you, I will-I have a mild case of cerebral palsy.'"

Bad Break

The revelation not only proved a nonissue for background work, but it actually became an asset when he auditioned for his biggest speaking role yet: that of moody, sarcastic son Walter White Jr. in Breaking Bad. The character, based on a deceased college friend of series writer/creator Vince Gilligan, possesses a more pronounced version of CP than RJ. Reversing years of therapy, the young actor taught himself to slur his speech and downgrade his motor skills, as well as maneuver on crutches, which he'd never used. "I was a little scared at first," he admits. "It's hard to go back to all of that. But after a while, you remember: 'I did this, I did that.'"

Gilligan snapped him up. "I was so impressed with him from the first time I saw him," he says. "He does have mild cerebral palsy, but he's such a fine actor and has so much raw talent. I felt so lucky when our casting people found him."

RJ shot the Bad pilot in the summer of 2007 in Albuquerque, NM, and the series premiered last January to rapturous reviews. During the seven-episode first season (which never specifically mentions Walter Jr.'s condition), he expertly essayed the role of a kid struggling to deal with his father's lung cancer-and his increasingly odd behavior as he secretly cooks crystal meth to bolster the family savings. But this isn't the sanctified depiction of juvenile disability that's typical of television: Walter Jr. is a warts-and-all adolescent who tries to buy beer, sneaks cleavage shots while videotaping a family gathering and even dresses down his father with an expletive when he initially declines chemotherapy. RJ soon attracted national attention, culminating in a USA Today profile.

Watching your child rapidly scale such heights is enough to give any parent pause. From the start, his mother harbored reservations. "He's had to struggle his whole life to overcome different obstacles, [like] when the kids could play ball and he couldn't-he didn't have the hand/eye coordination for baseball, [and] he was still in braces when they started football," she says. "His friends always had this niche, and he was never a part of it. Even though he handled it well, it was a big disappointment. I was so afraid with this business being so ­competitive- I didn't want the heartbreak."

She soon realized, however, that acting had the opposite effect on her son. "He said, 'You know, mom, all these years I cried because my friends had their niches. I think I've found my niche. Not everybody can be an actor.'"

Dealing with CP

An upbeat woman with a warm Southern twang, a strong Christian faith and a kind word for seemingly everyone her son has ever worked with, Dyna has been a single parent for most of her son's life. (She and RJ's father, who remain on good terms, split shortly after they adopted the boy as an infant.) As such, she's shouldered the lion's share of the work of raising a child with CP-work that began with obtaining an accurate diagnosis. When RJ was 9 months old, she began noticing that he had difficulty walking. Specialists dismissed her concerns, saying he was a toe-walker who would grow out of the phase. They told her that if he didn't walk normally by age 4, they would perform a heel operation.

The true nature of his condition came to light only after he accompanied his grandmother to a Louisiana Cadillac dealership at age 3. The boy had been walking across the dealership floor on the tips of his toes, falling repeatedly. Recognizing these symptoms as evidence of CP, the salesman inquired about his condition. He identified himself as a Shriner and urged RJ's grandmother not to seek the surgery that doctors had recommended. With Dyna's blessing, the salesman obtained an application for RJ to seek treatment at Shreveport Shriner's Hospital, a Louisiana facility that specializes in pediatric orthopedic care. There, doctors diagnosed RJ with CP. He's received treatment and checkups at the facility ever since, returning in recent years on an annual basis.

"If we had gone through with the surgery the [other] doctors were recommending, he could be crippled, [like] a lot of the kids that we see [who] have had that surgery," says Dyna. The referral to Shriner's "was just God's blessing looking over us. They're a big part of why RJ is who he is."

As a boy, RJ endured painful leg and body casts and night braces to straighten his developing limbs. Even middle-of-the-night trips to the bathroom became arduous. When the family temporarily relocated to Texas when RJ was in first grade, he attended an elementary school with an occupational, physical and speech therapy lab.

"That was just phenomenal, because he got OT, PT and speech every day," says Dyna. "And they would send homework. For speech, it would be different sounds and mouth exercises; [for] OT, he may have to fold washcloths at night. He would have to count beans and put them in different jars. and maneuver clay.

For PT, it was a lot of stretching, learning to ride a bike-things like that."

When the family later returned to Louisiana, Dyna continued to put her son through his OT and PT paces. "She still makes me fold clothes," he says with mock-exasperation.

Eventually, he took up soccer, playing the sport for seven seasons. He also studied karate as part of his therapy, and when his uncle, a former professional fisherman who lost his New Orleans home to Hurricane Katrina, returned to the area to assist in hurricane-relief efforts, RJ accompanied him. He dug ditches ("it builds eye coordination," he says), collected trash, mowed lawns and even rebuilt roofs. Sounds like a tall order for any teen, particularly one with CP, but this is a young man who until recently indulged in hiking and rock climbing-the latter activity causing his mother no small amount of worry.

"She doesn't like me to rock-climb because I've broken fingers," says RJ. "[But] if you're going to do it, then just do it-don't hold back and be a baby. If you're having fun, a [few] broken bones is not going to stop you."

His Breaking Bad contract bars him from doing anything too risky these days, aside from paintball. He credits his CP with driving him to such extremes. "You can almost hide your symptoms if you keep pushing yourself. I push myself until I'm about to break, slow down [and] take a long break. It really helps you, once you realize you can push yourself to this limit and keep going."

Full Steam Ahead

Last fall, he brought that take-no-prisoners approach to the set of Breaking Bad, which wrapped its second season of shooting in December. And later this year, he may tackle his first major film role, playing a developmentally challenged mute whose death triggers a skinhead gang war. It's a challenging part-but RJ's boss has complete confidence in his youngest cast member. "His acting chops are increasing," says Gilligan. "He was good to begin with, and he gets better with every episode.

"The biggest change other than that is that he's still growing," he laughs. "He started off shorter than I am, and I think he's pretty close to my height now!"

Teen magazines will surely take note-after all, this is the kid whom Gilligan initially worried might be too good looking to mesh with his less-than-high-fashion cast. He insists, however, that RJ's interests haven't shifted to Tiger Beat photo shoots.

"I got a call from him last week," says Gilligan, a fellow Southerner with a shared fondness for hunting and fishing. "He wanted me to know that Steve McQueen's personal collection of guns was being auctioned. He said, 'You know, Vince, you might want to buy some!'"

He may be the same down-home kid at heart, but RJ enjoys a larger-than-life ­significance in the minds of his burgeoning fan base. "Once the show aired, I can't tell you the [amount] of mail that RJ got-people with disabilities saying how it inspired them, and encouraging him to go forward," says Dyna. "Any time we can get the story out and inspire other people, that's always good."

Of course, exposure invites rumors. In RJ's case, they involve Miley Cyrus. He denies anything outside of a cordial working relationship with the actress-singer but insists he's cool with the line of questioning. "I'm an easy-going guy-nothing bothers me at all," he says. And whenever this self-described "happy single" gets wind of wild speculation, he takes comfort in a certain homegrown equation. "There's always going to be rumors. And rumors lead to more press, and press leads to more fame, and fame leads to more money, and money leads to more four-wheelers-and four-wheelers lead to more fun. So it's all just fine."

Jeff Bell is an ADVANCE contributing editor.

• To read about Mitte's Breaking Bad co-star, Betsy Brandt-who plays an X-ray technologist with a secret-visit our sister publication for medical imaging and radiation oncology here.