‘Need for Speed’ star Aaron Paul on how he almost ran over his director

When audiences last saw “Breaking Bad” star Aaron Paul, he was screaming down a dark road behind the wheel of a muscle car during the closing moments of AMC’s hit TV series.

The 34-year-old Paul finds himself in a similar situation at the outset of “Need for Speed” -- driving a souped up classic into uncertainty. However, the two projects couldn’t be more different.

Based on the video game series of the same name, the high-octane actioner from director Scott Waugh (“Medal of Valor”) puts Paul in the role of Tobey, a talented mechanic and street racer who is framed for the death of his friend by a jealous rival (played by Dominic Cooper). There's not a "Yeah, bitch!" in sight.

“I knew how to drive before this film – I had my license and everything – but I definitely did not know how to drive like this,” Paul told Yahoo Movies Canada while in Toronto in February. “One thing that I had to do that I was really nervous about was that thing where I had to slide up to [Scott] and stop just short of [him] on that bridge. I had to drive at the camera at a little bit more than 70 miles per hour because I needed just enough speed… ...Tobey flips the car around and he’s driving straight at the camera and he flings open the door and runs out. I had to get the car literally inches away from where the camera was, and there’s a human being attached to that camera.”

That human being was director Waugh, who joked that he was “expendable” and told his lead actor not to worry about hitting him.

“This isn't the first car hit I've done. Just come in,” Waugh, a former stuntman and stunt supervisor recalled telling Paul. “So he’s coming and I am looking through the lens and I can just hear the throttle and I just kind of thought ‘Uh oh. Maybe I shouldn't have said what I just said.’”

“‘If you go past your mark a little bit, I’ll just roll over the hood of the car,’” Paul remembered the director telling him. “Alright, well that’s not making me feel any better about the situation at hand."

“So he comes drifting in towards me and I just clenched up and I just said 'I’m not moving.' I literally just like a little girl just closed my eyes and screamed ‘Ahhhh!’” Waugh recalled with a laugh. “And then I heard the brakes screeching and it stops and I open my eyes and there he is literally two inches from the matte lens and I just went ‘Oh my god! Did I get it?’”

Both Paul and Waugh revealed that performing that kind of death-defying stunt (of which “Need for Speed” has no shortage of) required not only rigorous planning and safety, but also huge amounts of trust between the filmmaker, his actors, and the stunt performers.

“That’s what the stunt community has: trust. The set needed to have that,” Waugh stressed. “When he got behind the wheel, [Aaron] would know that we might be joking throughout the day, but when I said action there was no more bulls--- and everyone is on their A-game. Aaron was so great with that."

“When I was stopping short for that particular shot and [Scott] said it was OK to hit him with the car, that was him saying ‘I trust you,’” a more serious Paul said.

“People think we’re daredevils. We’re not,” the stuntman-turned-filmmaker said. “We are the exact opposite. We make sure that we don’t get hurt. With that you develop that trust. Aaron and I had that trust. I knew he wouldn’t hit me. I knew he wouldn’t. But if I pushed him a little bit he would feel comfortable enough for him to get that close to me… Plus I had safety men standing behind me just in case! I can say this now, but I did say to them ‘If it looks like he’s going to hit me, pull me.’"

“Need for Speed” is in theatres now.