RIP to an actor who was not defined by his disability in the show, but also at age 16 managed to hold his own against veteran actors dean norris, bryan cranston, aaron paul, and betsy brandt.

Definitely a memorable character and performance in Breaking Bad. Way too young, RIP.

Inappropriate, but clever.

Lived in Brownsville for a bit and got to know him towards the end of my stint there. Very nice guy his family does a lot for the arts in the city. He will be incredibly missed.

Incredibly sad. Great actor and sounds like he was a great person. Gone way too soon

Nooo what a tragedy

> best known for his role as Walter "Flynn" White Jr

in case anyone was wondering (like me)

That was unexpected. He was so young, too. RIP.

If it was by suicide (young deaths usually are), it wasn't so surprising.

I had listened to some podcasts where he said his financial situation hadn't been great.

If you watch them, you can kind of see his mind thinking.

I think you only notice such things if you've entertained the thoughts yourself.

TMZ says it was suicide.

His business manager stole all his money from Breaking Bad so dude actually ended up in debt because of all the taxes he owed. She never paid his taxes which he didn't find out until years later. She was sending him fake documents.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/breaking-bad-walt-jr-says-132...

"I write a check to go pay my taxes, and instead of her using it to pay my taxes, she would send me a fake filing of taxes and take that money."

Maybe he was way too innocent! You write a check to the IRS or have federal/state auto-detect. That option is there for sure if filing electronically.

You don't understand how the entertainment business works.

Actors don't get or pay bills, their agent or manager does.

That's part of the justification for taking their 10%: you don't have to worry about anything, anymore. If they were young when they started, it was always like this, and they never learned such basic skills.

Do you think when someone famous drops their phone in a toilet they go stand in line at the Apple store with the normies?

No.

I wonder how many know how to write a check.

More than once I've heard a celebrity explain to an interviewer, "I don't know where the bills go."

When I was making big bank, my accountant suggested I give him check writing ability to make it smoother for me to pay bills.

He was later arrested for fraud.

Amazing.

> I give him check writing ability to make it smoother for me to pay bills.

I immediately smell a giant red flag! I'm dealing with a lawsuit in another country, so I can't be there more than once or twice a year. To handle that situation, I'd have to sign a power of attorney. That document was shocking to read. It gave my lawyer pretty much every possible permission, including withdrawing from the suit at his will, and it said I can't sue him, I can't change attorney, and whatnot. Funny, the doc had been in circulation for the last 50 years. I wrote a new doc and gave him the absolute minimum :-)

Did you give him the ability?

Haha nope. He even looked like a scammer.

Saul Goodman?

Rather than too innocent, I would say let down by his elders.

It may have changed by now (though I doubt it) but this kind of thing was not covered in my high school or college education and nobody else taught me anything about how taxes work, and so when I entered the workforce in my 20s I was subject to a crash course on the subject after I wound up with a surprise bill from the IRS.

Given that he entered the industry at a young age he very well may have not had anybody teach him any better which enabled the accountant to take advantage of him.

Sounds like he killed the wrong person.

That seems true from our perspective. But from his, there may be a huge difference between committing murder, no matter how justified it may seem, and just leaving the world.

Hate to agree with this, but I've seen what being defrauded does to someone.

This kind of theft seems so standard in the industry. It's surprising they get away with it.

Al Pacino got taken for all of his liquid cash: $50 million, by his accountant.

https://variety.com/2024/film/news/al-pacino-broke-act-bad-f...

Leonard Cohen comes to mind as well[1]:

Cohen discovered that he had unknowingly paid a credit card bill of Lynch's for $75,000, and that most of the money in his accounts was gone, including money from his retirement accounts and charitable trust funds. This had begun as early as 1996, when Lynch started selling Cohen's music publishing rights, despite the fact that Cohen had no financial incentive to do so.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonard_Cohen#Lawsuits_and_fin...

Dane Cook was famously assfucked out of $12 million by his own (half) brother, who was also his manager. Dude was hiding cash in jars of spaghetti sauce.

IIRC he did prison time for it and it was in the news again recently as it was made into a documentary.

> Dude was hiding cash in jars of spaghetti sauc

Wait, like on The Bear?

Horrible. And she's still doing it to other actors and her identity is not disclosed.

Why isn't she doing a 20 year sentence for this kind of fraud?

It's very confusing because the way the Internet has described it is multiple counts of fraud and theft but I can't find a single reputable source confirming it.

Good that you point that out: we don't really know what happened between him and his accountant.

> According to the actor, the manager allegedly diverted money intended for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and provided falsified documents showing that his taxes had been paid. Mitte remained unaware of the problem for several years until the IRS notified him of outstanding taxes, penalties, and interest. [0]

[0] https://poptvculture.com/what-was-rj-mittes-net-worth-at-dea...

Financial difficulties caused by mismanagement. He should have been wealthy and comfortable after his work. I feel terrible for the guy.

What’s said is that yahoo “article” is really an ad for a budgeting app, offered towards the end as a potential way to protect yourself from the same outcome.

Grift layered on grift. What a world.

But how is he responsible for the back taxes then? There must be a case here where it comes out of her pocket, right?

Imagine if that was the case, then everyone would just blame their accountant. No, the taxpayer is ultimately responsible.

But presumably he could sue his accountant (I bet he signed something that means he can't.)

Link to the podcast?

I had the same thought the other day, once you feel a certain way, identifying it in others is much easier. Definitely true for depression and suicide, but I guess I've also seen it be true for gay people as well (who always seem to know within seconds who is and isn't gay).

Canadians have this power too

To know who's gay or who's Canadian?

Yes

It was The Iced Coffee Hour podcast on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zHqkupx_w0

I think it was iced coffee hour.

edit: another reply posted a new article that links the podcast.

From what I understand, his manager basically withheld a lot of money and didn’t pay taxes, even though claiming they were paid. He didn’t find out until years later, which put him in a lot of debt.

I hope you can find peace. All the best to you

Thanks. It's been like that since I was a kid. I did find some peace for a few months but others noticed and apparently that was enough to attack me for it. Back down we go.

I hope you're fine

If you're insinuating that you had such thoughts, please don't. We love you man!

He died by suicide.

A reminder to everyone here: Even when you can’t see a way forward, one can still emerge. Stay. Reach out. You don’t have to face the darkest moments alone.

I’ve attempted suicide three times. Here’s the tip I give people who I encounter these days who have a severe mental illness.

The thing that stopped me from attempting again was 15 years ago I finally realized that no one knows what happens after you die. So I couldn’t really say for sure whether they’re dying by suicide would lead me in a better situation.

Fuck that other person. I'm sorry you have to deal with idiots like that here.

I can't imagine what you're going through but just know that you matter and that the world is a better place with you in it. I hope you are doing better and you get the help you need.

why do you expect people to know some random movie

It’s not really funny, dude

I guess this isn't the place for it, but from a scientific point of view, I'm quite certain what's after (i.e. I've convinced myself) ...

I'm really sorry you have gone through that. I have been pretty deeply depressed a couple times in past, to the point of considering suicide. What I share with people is that in those periods, it truly felt like things weren't going to get better and I was just going to be in emotional pain indefinitely.

But gradually, things got better in my life. I have had so much joy in the 20 years since. I still have bad days sometimes, but on the whole, I feel such a sense of gratitude.

I can't promise anyone that their own situation will get better. I can only say that my experience is that it is possible.

Thanks and sorry for the delay, @dang has me rate limited for reason.

I accepted life as an adventure. A true adventure, when you say "eff it", I am gonna die anyway so why not embrace the suffering as part of it.

For me though, it was my psychosis driving my SI. Not much rational thought going on.

I'm so sorry. I'm glad you are here and are sharing this with folks like me. I lost my child, mom, and wife, all back to back in accidents. I really have lost all the will to live. Like... I have made peace with everything tbh! I did think about everything, but I couldn't do it because of dad. And then at a point we both thought about it ending it all, but eventually I found my support system with my friends. Support system + meds + therapy... are helping me keep functioning these days. Reaching out is the first step.

And I try think about this the same way about my birth. I really cannot say what it was like before... So death is kind of the same. But the 'inbetween' matters. At least it mattered in my case. For now, it helps to live just by the day and not think beyond it.

If anyone is reading this and is in a dark place please know that things can be better with the right support and help.

I guess Noaidi, me, and other folks here are proof that it all works.

I just read your blog post and my heart is with you. Seriously. You are a strong soul. What else can be said. Nothing will make it better. We are here to suffer, for an unknown purpose. Only faith in the divine gives me hope in those moments. And I hope that one day life will make more sense

Thank you for taking the time and the kind words. I don't know if I'm strong, but I'm just a man trying hard to accept whatever nature throws at me. Even after losing my child and mom, I had faith in life, thanks to my wife, but I don't know what it means anymore. We're all just a big bag of weird cosmic anachronisms in this vast cold universe. The only faith I have is that we are all connected in a way and in that sense, the ones I lost are still with me.

I personally think they still exist somewhere. Someone who was my only family died suddenly last year and it was the worst thing I could imagine happening. I still feel like he communicates with me sometimes (probably an unpopular opinion on this techy forum). I think life is supposed to be brutal sometimes but there is always hope somehow even if there’s temporarily no hope in the human realm I try to have faith that there is hope if I could see everything from the divine view.

I'm sorry for your loss. And thanks for sharing this. I'm an atheist myself but I can totally relate to the phenomenon. I still talk to my mom and wife all the time. I look at consciousness thru the lens of panpsychism and I believe we're connected. Maybe it is the mind's defense mechanism or something we don't understand yet, but it's the only solace I have.

Thanks. Peace, yes, that is the key. A very radical acceptance that everything is impermanent.

It works, for sure, and I need to be more vocal about my survival and how I did, and still do it. Thank you again, and I am glad you came out of all of that with such great insight. _/\_

What is the way forward? When people are staring down the barrel of being completely broke, in debt, facing homelessness, malnutrition, deteriorating quality of life until they ultimately die, what is going to emerge except some black swan of event of pure luck that gets you back to a bearable life? Just telling people it gets better doesn’t help, you must help them.

“People with cerebral palsy experience mental health conditions and psychiatric disorders at significantly higher rates than the general population.”

I’m hard pressed to blame this solely on his financial situations. Cerebral palsy changes the brain. It might be that he had another underlying mental illness that he was afraid to talk about because of the stigma. I mean, this is just guessing, but a lot of people live through our situations without dying by suicide.

I’m a three times suicide survivor and I can tell you it wasn’t anything financial just something that took over my body

N=1 but reading “Down and Out in Paris & London” by George Orwell really helped me out these things into perspective.

What’s the perspective? Because it’s seems like it’s always some variation of “it could be worse”. Like yea there’s probably a lower circle of hell you could be burning in but you’re still in hell with no way out.

As someone currently struggling in a somewhat similar situation to that book, what gets me through the day is unbridled hate towards the system and an overriding desire to see justice

For me it was that life can still be worth to live even if you are homeless or in similar dire and difficult circumstances.

It's sad. The reality you describe is hard to grasp for many but it's the reality of modern life in many ways. I can't say that I wouldn't resort to saying things that I don't fully believe in if one of my friends was on the verge. I would give it shot to make them reconsider it and perhaps it was just an irrational moment.

My sister killed herself about 20 years ago. It wasn't a spur of the moment thing. She was an extremely intelligent and physically-capable person. What she did was both very elaborate and very planned, and it is clear that she had rationalized this escape for a long time before she began the lengthy process of executing it.

Nobody but her saw it coming, and I still do not know what kind of resources could ever have succeeded at allowing her to make a different decision.

But I am sure that whatever it was that her demons and issues consisted of, that none of them could have been excised by simple platitudes, abject kindness, or minimizing the problems by pretending to be able to relate. She was smarter than that.

Is that a trick question? Anybody can submit something. And as of this moment 119 people upvoted it. There's your answer, the community seems to think it fits here.

I guess I didn't realize HN had become TV news and LLMs all the time.

HN has often been the first place I hear about some celebrity dying for several years now. The LLM trend is indeed very unfortunate.

Sharing stuff about him helps folks feel happy.

I am of course familiar with him from Breaking Bad. I accidentally stumbled across him participating in the (awful) series by Bear Grylls The Island. He did a celebrity survival challenge. Totally wasn't expecting to see him on a 2AM YouTube binge after years of not seeing him at all.

From wiki:

* born with cerebral palsy

* adopted, parents separated while 2 mths old, raised only by his mother

* his mother disabled since he was 13, had to assume financial responsibility for her and his then 2yr old sister

That must have been a very difficult life, hats off to him.

He was great in Breaking Bad.

It was one of the things I appreciated about BB - how many tv shows would cast someone with Cerebral Palsy in it? It made the show feel more genuine and realistic, along with being set in a place in America that isn't a well-known location.

I'm sad and angered to learn that his manager committed fraud with his tax payments - I hope the authorities pursue her and hold her accountable for that.