gq:
Source: gqm.agHank Schrader, DEA
First impressions are hard to shake: Certainly when Breaking Bad debuted, it was easy to think that Walter White’s brother-in law Hank Schrader was just going to be a buffoon that occasionally had some comical insights into midlife, but hardly anything more. Oh, how that’s changed. Dean Norris has taken Hank Schrader and made him into one of the show’s smartest and layered characters. The panic attacks. The PTSD. His recovery from being shot and partially paralyzed. And let’s not forget that dark turn into amateur geology. Now, he seems determined more than ever to find the elusive “Heisenberg”—a criminal mastermind who, it turns out, is sitting at Hank’s own dinner table.
So as the series winds down, it’s Hank who’s in one of the best positions to stop the evil that’s become Walter. Norris himself is a veteran actor, who’s been cast over the years in a number of iconic movies and TV series such as Lethal Weapon 2, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, NYPD Blue, and may more. Next, you’ll be able to see him opposite John Cusack and Nicholas Cage in The Frozen Ground, as well as opposite Christopher Meloni in Small Time. GQ spoke with Norris about his first forays into acting, the evolution of Hank Schrader, and life as a bogey golfer.
