Aaron Paul was born Aaron Paul Sturtevant,[4] in Emmett, Idaho,[5] on August 27, 1979,[6] the youngest of four children born to Darla (née Haynes) and Baptist minister Robert Sturtevant.[7][8] He was born a month premature in his parents' bathroom.[4] He grew up participating in church plays.[8] He graduated in 1997 from Centennial High School in Boise, Idaho,[9] after which he drove to Los Angeles in his 1982 Toyota Corolla with his mother and $6,000 in savings.[10] Soon after arriving in Los Angeles, he appeared on an episode of the CBSgame showThe Price Is Right, which aired on January 3, 2000. Appearing under his birth name, he played and lost his pricing game and overbid on his Showcase.[11] He also worked as a movie theater usher at Universal Studios in Hollywood.[12]
Paul first became known for his role as Scott Quittman on HBO's Big Love, on which he appeared fourteen times. In 2008, he began playing Jesse Pinkman on the AMC series Breaking Bad. His character was originally meant to die during the first season, but after seeing the chemistry between Paul and the lead actor Bryan Cranston, the series creator Vince Gilligan changed his mind and modified the original plans to include Jesse as a main character.[19] For his role in Breaking Bad, Paul was nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series in 2009, 2010, 2012, 2013, and 2014; he won the award in 2010,[20] 2012,[21] and 2014.[22]
Paul starred in the film Smashed, which was one of the official selections for the 2012 Sundance Film Festival.[23] In an October 2012 interview with ESPN, he spoke about his childhood experience as a Boise State Broncos fan and discussed the challenges of portraying a meth addict in Breaking Bad.[24] In 2012 and 2013, he made appearances on Tron: Uprising, voicing a character named Cyrus.[citation needed]
In September 2013, he was featured on Zen Freeman's dance song, "Dance Bitch".[25] He made a surprise appearance on Saturday Night Live's 39th season opener as "meth nephew", a relative of Bobby Moynihan's popular "drunk uncle" character.[26] In 2014, Paul starred in Need for Speed, as a street racer recently released from prison who takes revenge on a wealthy business associate.[27] Paul stars alongside Juliette Lewis in the family drama Hellion, as the drunken father of two young vandals.[28] Also in 2014, he co-starred in the biblical epic Exodus: Gods and Kings, portraying the Hebrew prophet Joshua.[29]
In December 2013, Netflix announced that Paul would be a cast member on the animated series BoJack Horseman.[30] On March 3, 2014, he appeared on WWE Raw to promote Need for Speed, by entering the arena in a sports car with Dolph Ziggler, providing commentary for Ziggler's match against Alberto Del Rio, and helping Ziggler win by distracting Del Rio.[31] On September 23, 2014, it was announced that Paul would play the young Louis Drax's father who becomes the focus of a criminal investigation after his son has a near-fatal fall in an upcoming Miramax film titled The 9th Life of Louis Drax, a supernaturalthriller based on a book of the same name.[32]
In 2016, Paul began playing Eddie Lane, a man who in a life crisis joins a cult but subsequently questions his faith, in the Hulu series The Path, which debuted on March 30, 2016.[33] Paul voiced the main protagonist, Nyx Ulric, in Kingsglaive: Final Fantasy XV, released in July 2016.
In 2013, Paul helped organize a contest to raise $1.6 million for his wife's non-profit anti-bullying organization, the Kind Campaign. The winners of the contest won a trip to the Hollywood Forever Cemetery screening of the final episode of Breaking Bad.[41]
Paul has spoken positively about the asexual community, as a result of portraying the asexual character Todd Chavez on BoJack Horseman. In 2019, Paul stated that he was "so proud to represent that community... it's so nice to have a character on TV—especially on a show so powerful as BoJack—that represents a community that should be represented."[42]
In 2019, Paul and Cranston released their own line of mezcal called Dos Hombres.[43]
Paul met actress and director Lauren Parsekian at the Coachella Festival,[44] and they became engaged in Paris on January 1, 2012.[45] They were married in a 1920s Parisian carnival-themed wedding in Malibu on May 26, 2013, with musicians Foster the People and John Mayer performing.[46] Paul emailed the song "Beauty" by The Shivers to everyone on the guest list and asked them to learn the lyrics so they could sing along during the ceremony.[10] They live in the Los Feliz neighborhood of Los Angeles, having sold their previous home in West Hollywood,[47] and own a second cabin-style home near McCall, Idaho.[48] They have a daughter named Story Annabelle (born February 2018)[49][50] and a son named Ryden Caspian (born April 2022).[51] Paul's Breaking Bad co-star Bryan Cranston is Ryden's godfather.[52]
In April 2013, to commemorate the final episode of Breaking Bad, Paul and Cranston got Breaking Bad tattoos on the last day of filming; Paul had the phrase "no half measures" tattooed onto his biceps, while Cranston had the show's logo tattooed onto one of his fingers.[53] In October that year, during a ceremony at the Egyptian Theatre in Boise, Idaho, Governor Butch Otter declared October 1 "Aaron Paul Sturtevant Day".[54]
Paul legally dropped his birth surname of "Sturtevant" in November 2022 so that he, his wife, and their children would all officially share the "Paul" surname.[55][56]
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