Memorial Page for RJ Mitte

RJ Mitte (born Roy Frank Mitte III; August 21, 1992, in Jackson, Mississippi – October 12, 2026, in Brownsville, Texas) was an American actor and disability rights activist. He was best known for playing Walter White Jr., also called Flynn, on the AMC series Breaking Bad. Like his character, he lived with cerebral palsy. He used his fame to push for greater visibility for people with disabilities in film and television. He served as an ambassador for United Cerebral Palsy and Shriners Children’s and as president of the Mitte Foundation, his family’s charity.

Childhood in Louisiana and Texas

Shortly after his birth, RJ Mitte was adopted by Roy Frank Mitte Jr. and Dyna Mitte. He grew up between his paternal grandparents’ ranch in Texas and Lafayette, Louisiana, where he lived with his mother and his younger sister, Lacianne.

At three, he was diagnosed with cerebral palsy, a lifelong movement disorder caused by early damage to the brain; his case was mild. For much of his childhood he was treated by Shriners Hospitals for Children. For months his legs were in casts to straighten his feet, and as a child he wore leg braces.

Looking back in 2021, he said:

“When I was a kid growing up with cerebral palsy, there were a lot of times where I was told I would never walk properly or never talk properly, I would never have a normal life or career. And my family was like, no, he’s going to go do things.”

The road to Los Angeles

It was his little sister who opened the door to show business. A talent agent spotted Lacianne at a water park and invited her to a meeting in Los Angeles. There the agent signed 13-year-old RJ as well, and the family moved to Hollywood. He started acting, as he later put it, “to meet kids my own age.” Alongside daily speech therapy and exercise, he took acting classes. His first screen appearances were as an extra, including on the Disney series Hannah Montana.

Walter White Jr. in Breaking Bad

RJ Mitte was 14 when he was cast in Breaking Bad. On the AMC series he played Walter White Jr., the son of chemistry teacher Walter White (Bryan Cranston), who turns to the drug trade after a cancer diagnosis. Creator Vince Gilligan modeled the character on a college friend who had cerebral palsy. Walter Jr. uses crutches; Mitte himself did not need them.

When the show premiered in January 2008, he was 15. He appeared in all five seasons, until the series ended in 2013. Mitte and his castmates were nominated for the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series in 2012 and 2013 and won it in 2014 for the final season. The series itself received two Peabody Awards.

In 2015 he called the role “the opportunity of a lifetime” and added: “I hope I was able to educate viewers about CP and to give them a better understanding of what it means to live with a physical disability.”

Advocate for people with disabilities

RJ Mitte was an ambassador for United Cerebral Palsy and for Shriners Children’s, the organization that had treated him as a child, and served as the Screen Actors Guild’s spokesperson for actors with disabilities. Beginning in October 2014, he was the celebrity face of the Shriners anti-bullying campaign #CutTheBull. He knew bullying firsthand from his own childhood.

He spoke at schools and universities about living with a disability and about bullying, including at Texas A&M University–Commerce in April 2015. In 2021 he said: “Everyone thinks people just want things to get handed to them. But really what they want is just the opportunity to succeed or fail.”

New roles, the runway and the Paralympics

In 2014 Mitte took on a recurring role on Switched at Birth as Campbell, a pre-med college student paralyzed in a snowboarding accident. That same year he appeared in Gap’s spring campaign, and on June 21, 2015, he made his runway debut at Vivienne Westwood’s show in Milan. In 2016 he was part of British broadcaster Channel 4’s presenting team for the Paralympic Games in Rio de Janeiro.

After Breaking Bad he appeared in numerous films. In 2016 he starred in Who’s Driving Doug as Doug, a college student with muscular dystrophy. Other films included The Recall (2017), Time Share, which took him to the Sundance Film Festival in 2018, River Runs Red (2018) and The Oak Room (2020). In Standing Up for Sunny (2019) he starred as Travis, a man with cerebral palsy. He played Mind Master in the Netflix series The Guardians of Justice (2022) and starred in The Unseen (2023).

In Triumph (2021) he played Mike, a high school student with cerebral palsy who wants to become a wrestler. The film is based on the life of its writer, Michael D. Coffey; Mitte also served as an executive producer. Because the role went to an actor with cerebral palsy, the film received the Ruderman Family Foundation Seal of Authentic Representation. “I cast RJ to star in my first movie Triumph because I wanted a great actor who has CP to play me,” Coffey said in October 2026. In his most recent film, Talking to Strangers (2026), Mitte again played a man with cerebral palsy.

Notable roles:

• Walter White Jr. in Breaking Bad (2008–2013)
• Campbell in Switched at Birth (2014)
• Doug in Who’s Driving Doug (2016)
• Travis in Standing Up for Sunny (2019)
• Mike in Triumph (2021)

The Mitte Foundation and Brownsville

In 2019 RJ Mitte became president of the board of the Mitte Foundation, which his grandfather Roy F. Mitte and Joann Cole Mitte had established in 1994. The Austin-based foundation funds education, youth development, aging and disability services, and it awards scholarships. Mitte made his home in Brownsville, on the Texas–Mexico border, where his grandfather had grown up; there the foundation supported the Mitte Cultural District. As the foundation’s new president, he wanted its plans for the city to be more than the board’s own vision; in 2020 he said: “I needed to hear from locals first.”

Farewell

RJ Mitte died on October 12, 2026, in Brownsville, Texas, at the age of 34. Colleagues from Breaking Bad and Switched at Birth paid tribute to him. Dean Norris, who played Hank Schrader on Breaking Bad, wrote: “He was a sweetheart of a young man and will be greatly missed.”

His legacy

Susan Sellers, president of United Cerebral Palsy, said: “His advocacy was rooted in a commitment to ensuring that people with cerebral palsy and other disabilities are seen, heard, and afforded the opportunity to reach their full potential.” The actor Keron Day put it this way: “That is his legacy: disabled people having careers within the creative industries.” And his Switched at Birth co-star Marlee Matlin wrote: “There will never be another like RJ Mitte.”