Walter White



Walter White, also known by his alias Heisenberg, is the central protagoist and anti-hero of the popular TV show Breaking Bad. Once a promising chemist who was one of the founding members of the fictional "Gray Matter Technologies", Walter left the company for personal reasons and became an unhappy and disillusioned high school chemistry teacher. After being diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer, he resorts to manufacturing methamphetamine to ensure his family's financial security when he dies. As the series progresses, Walter gradually grows villainous and dangerous.

He is portrayed by Bryan Cranston. Both the Walter White character and Bryan Cranston's performance have received critical acclaim. Cranston has won three consecutive Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series, becoming the second actor ever to do so and the first since Bill Cosby for I Spy in the 1960s.

Biography
Walter White is a talented chemist who, as a graduate student at the California Institute of Technology, contributed to research that helped a team win a Nobel Prize in Chemistry. After graduate school, Walter founded the firm Gray Matter Technologies with Elliott Schwartz, his former classmate and close friend. Around this time, Walter dated his lab assistant, Gretchen. However, he abruptly left both Gretchen and Gray Matter Technologies, retaining financial interest in the company. Gretchen and Elliott later married and made a fortune, over which Walter secretly harbors animosity. By the start of Breaking Bad, Walt has been forced to work as a high school chemistry teacher in Albuquerque, New Mexico, providing instruction to uninterested and disrespectful students. The job pays so poorly that he is forced to take a second job at a car wash, which proves particularly humiliating when he must clean the cars of his own students. Walter is married to Skyler White; they have a teenage son named Walter Jr., who has cerebral palsy. Skyler is also pregnant with their second child, Holly, who is born at the end of season two. lt's other family includes Skyler's sister, Marie Schrader, and her husband, Hank, who is an agent with the Drug Enforcement Administration.