Aaron Paul, a ‘Bad’ boy who turned out good
FIRST THING you’ll notice about Aaron Paul when you meet him is that photographs don’t do him justice.
The puppy fat face that makes him look much younger than his 35 years is certainly not as evident in the flesh and the jaw is more defined than pictures suggest.
In short he is a good-looking fella’ and the fact that he stands up to greet me with a firm handshake and a ‘hey-you-doing-buddy’ endears me to him straight away.
Our time is limited but we immediately get down to talking about the pressing matter of my eye which, I point out to him lest he feel awkward, has been the recent victim of a subconjunctival haemorrhage and is quite frankly rather unsightly.
“Did you feel it?” he asks with a grim curiosity. “It looks pretty cool, I think.”
When I explain that I did it on purpose because I was going for the part of a Bond villain and thought he might have some connections, he laughs heartily.
Yep, it’s safe to say that within a minute myself and A.P. are good buddies… or maybe that’s just the way he seems to make people feel.
Paul comes across as a remarkably upbeat and down-to-earth individual. When I meet him, he has only been in Dublin three days and, judging by all the people putting his picture on their Twitter and Facebook accounts, he has met more Dubliners than the gravediggers of Glasnevin and probably been in just as many pubs.
“It’s my first time and I love it,” says the actor.
“I’ve always wanted to come. I’m going to come back for a good solid couple of weeks. I’m here ’til Thursday and that’s not nearly enough time.”
The Breaking Bad star is in Dublin to promote the Budweiser Dream Job competition which is being run through the brewer’s Facebook page.
This is the second year of the competition and offers the winning candidate €50,000. Anyone over 18 can apply through the Budweiser Facebook page, telling the judges what their dream job is, why they feel passionate about it and most crucially why they should be given the bursary to pursue it.
“I’m here to encourage people to apply for the competition,” says Paul. “Everyone has a dream floating around their head, so I’m asking people to chase after it.”
Though now a globally-recognised star, Paul started out like most Hollywood wannabes, travelling to Los Angeles aged 17 with next to nothing and that aforementioned dream of making it big. He worked several jobs and at one point he even put in an appearance on a game show just to make ends meet.
“Something like this would have absolutely helped me,” he says, referring to the prize money being offered by Budweiser.
“It would have helped me to totally focus on what I wanted to do, being an actor. I wouldn’t have had to go to the day job. I mean before I even moved to LA I worked five jobs at one time just to get the money together to get there. When I got there, I worked in a movie theatre at night so that during the day I could do auditions.”
Paul was 27 when he finally landed something he could hang his hopes on, a role in the HBO drama Big Love. Ten years of making commercials and landing bit parts in movies had, on the face of it at least, finally paid off. Feeding himself was still a struggle, however.
Soap actors are not as well paid as some might think, but Paul gives me an emphatic “no” when I ask him had he ever thought about packing his bags and moving back to his home in Idaho.
“Oh there were so many knockbacks,” he says.
“There still are. That’s the nature of the beast. But once you understand it, you stop taking it personally. If you don’t get a job, you move on to the next one. There’s always going to be another job so you’ve just got to roll with the punches. If you want it for the right reasons and want it bad enough, then it’ll happen.”
He was eventually rewarded for his perseverance when the script for Vince Gilligan’s Breaking Bad came in the post.
His audition was flawless and months later the world was introduced to Jesse Pinkman, a high-school drop-out who earned money cooking crystal meth.
Initial plans for the series saw Paul’s character being killed off after series one, but such was the chemistry — no pun intended — between Paul and co-star Bryan Cranston that Gilligan decided to keep him on.
“I love Jesse,” he recently said in an interview with The Guardian. “I loved playing him, I miss him. My favourite job hands down — and I think I can speak for everyone involved — was Breaking Bad. Everyone involved, from top to bottom, we were all running to work.
We couldn’t wait to get there, we were all very proud to be a part of it. It was so good.”
The series saw Paul win three Emmys and earned him a Golden Globe nomination in 2013. It has also resulted in a plethora of movie offers from some of the world’s most respected directors, including Ridley Scott who cast Paul as Joshua in his most recent movie Exodus: Gods and Kings.
“It was epic. He’s one of my favourite directors of all time,” says Paul. “He’s such a legend so it was really cool even just to be on the set.”
The film itself has caused some controversy. Both the United Arab Emirates and Egypt have kept the movie away from their cinemas because it depicts God as a person.
“I understand the argument,” says Paul.
“The movie is just one group of people’s take on the story. There’s so many different interpretations, so many different takes on the Bible. I read the Bible growing up, my father was a southern Baptist minister.
"I know the Bible. So in Exodus, Moses instead of talking to a bush the whole movie we have him talking to a little boy; it’s just a different take.
"You know, God comes in many forms, including a burning bush, so the producers just basically thought it would be more visually engaging if there was someone actually talking back to him. So look, I understand the question. It’s just a different interpretation.”
When not on set or promoting his latest movie, Paul spends much of his time with his wife Lauren Parsekian. The couple met at the Coachella Music Festival some years ago and married in 2013.
“We actually met the night before the festival,” he recalls. “We were with the same group of people the whole weekend. And I remember I was sitting on a fence and she came walking up and that was that.”
Though the pitter-patter of tiny feet is yet to be heard in Chez Paul, Jesse Pinkman’s heart-warming and ultimately heart-wrenching relationship with Brock, the young son of a sometime girlfriend bodes well for the future.
“I love kids man,” says Paul. “I have 16 nieces and nephews. The idea of having kids is a beautiful one, they’re a blessing, and I hope to someday.”
Between now and then there are plenty of pubs to be visited, films to be made and maybe, just maybe Bond villains to be slain.
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