When you’re born a month premature in your parents’ small-town Idaho bathroom, there’s no place to go but up, right? So instead of college, why not take your ’82 Corolla, $6,000, and your mom, and head out to L.A. to be an actor? Under those circumstances, a kooky contestant spot on The Price is Right and a string of commercials (Corn Pops, Juicy Fruit, Vanilla Coke) are legitimately “up.”

The wacked-out, frenetic gusto with which the young Aaron Paul pitched those products could be presumed the result of consuming admirable quantities of them. Get to know him, though, and you realize the intensity is that of a guy who’s all-in, all the time. A guy who embraces each new opportunity with the zeal that comes from not knowing if “now” will ever happen again. When you spend seven years doing one-episode guest TV appearances before landing on – and surviving – one of the most critically acclaimed TV shows of all time, you can’t be blamed for thinking that way.

As Breaking Bad’s chemistry student/meth addict/drug dealer Jesse Pinkman, Paul was supposed to be killed off after the show’s first season. Instead, he became the only character besides lead Bryan Cranston to appear in every episode of the show, which went on to win 16 Emmy Awards and two Golden Globe Awards (among many, many others). It won Paul himself the Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series three times. While Breaking Bad may have killed its own with reckless abandon, creator Vince Gilligan showed shrewd discrimination in keeping Paul above ground, telling Details magazine, “Over the years, Jesse became more likable than I originally intended, because Aaron himself is so easy to relate to. He deepened my understanding of the character, and that deepened the meaning of the show.” If viewers related to Jesse, it was because Paul lent him poignancy and a moral compass, even if its needle was inclined to wobble.

Paul’s bantam cockiness as Tobey Marshall in 2014’s Need for Speed exemplifies his gift for letting us sense versus see what goes on beneath his characters’ cultivated personae. There’s no doubting his talent, but that’s an amorphous word. Paul’s best work draws on instinct, and a deep curiosity about people, morality and human contradictions; characters and their stories are one way for him to explore the answers. The fact that he’s the son of a Baptist minister made us especially curious about his experience starring in Hulu’s original series The Path, where he portrays a cult member struggling with questions of faith, power and marriage.

It’s a good career moment for an inveterate seeker like Paul, who loves what he’s doing but loves whatever he may do next even more. Last year alone, he got back in the blood-and-guts biz in the highbrow heist flick Triple 9 with Kate Winslet and Chiwetel Ejiofor and turned in strong, sympathetic performances in both Eye In The Sky and Come and Find Me. He’s been starring in and executive-producing Netflix’s dark comedy BoJack Horseman, and recently sold a one-hour drama to NBC.

And why not? If Paul still sees Breaking Bad as a unicorn, then no better time to be all-in. In a New York Times article, Bryan Cranston recalled an especially punishing location shoot that left the Breaking cast exhausted. “We’re wiping our brows and [Aaron] just said to me, ‘Aw, man, that was so much fun.’ I said, ‘Aaron, that’s my wish for you. I hope you never lose that enthusiasm.’ ” We’re not worried.