Send this page to someone via email

If you happen to look like a pop culture icon, you might as well embrace it.

That’s the attitude of Bill Laird, a bus driver who bears a striking resemblance to Walter White a.k.a Heisenberg, the protagonist of Breaking Bad, the wildly popular TV series about a high school chemistry teacher turned drug kingpin.

“When I first walked in, I was like, damn, this guy’s Heisenberg, right?” said one passenger on the 135 bus that serves Simon Fraser University.

There’s long been a resemblance between Laird and the character portrayed by actor Bryan Cranston, but the complete transformation happened by accident. Last September, Laird wanted a new look so he grew a goatee, put on some ‘Just for Men’ and went to work.

His colleagues were stunned.

“He came in one day and I said, ‘My God, you look like Heisenberg.’ And he really didn’t think he looked like Heisenberg until he started looking at the pictures,” said colleague Robert Ferguson.

Story continues below advertisement

Someone posted a photo of Laird online, and the image soon popped up on social media.

Brian Laird has heard the joke about him ‘braking bad’ more than a few times. SFU Confessions

“My son called me up and apparently he saw a picture of me in the London Sun,” Laird said. “I think the header for it was, ‘Is my braking bad?'”

He may look like Walter White, but in reality Laird is nothing like the anti-hero who once proclaimed, “I am not in danger. I am the danger.”

The school paper named him “SFU’s nicest bus driver.”

If Breaking Bad ever returns and Bryan Cranston needs a stand-in, Laird would be happy to oblige. But until then, he’s just happy being the star of the 135 bus.

“I really do love my job,” he said.

Story continues below advertisement

– With files from Jordan Armstrong