Breaking Bad alum Dean Norris’ wife of 23 years, Bridget Norris, secretly filed for divorce last year amid the couple’s bankruptcy issues.
Bridget, 50, filed for divorce from Dean, 63, in California on Valentine’s Day in February 2025 and cited “irreconcilable differences” as the reason for the pair’s separation the month prior, according to court documents obtained by Us on Thursday, November 5. (TMZ was first to report the news.)
In her petition, Bridget also requested joint legal and physical custody of her and Dean’s five kids. Dean responded to Bridget’s motion months later in May 2025, though the case has yet to be finalized.
TMZ also claims that Dean and Bridget are in the middle of a chapter 11 bankruptcy case for their California restaurant, Swing Inn Cafe, that they purchased in 2022. Per the court docs, Dean alleged the Temecula-based eatery experienced a decline in revenue from 2024 to 2025 and only had approximately $100,000 to $500,000 in assets but between $1 million and $10 million in liabilities.
Dean and Bridget, who had been married since October 2001, have not publicly addressed their split or financial woes. Us reached out for comment.
Dean and Bridget have often kept their family lives private despite his Hollywood career.
“I never had a month or so go by where I haven’t had a job, but you always worry that someone will turn off the tap,” Dean told USA Today in 2010. “The way I look at it, I’m a guy who acts to live. You can always have a job if you can play shoot-’em-up stuff. If playing cops pays the bills, that’s what I need to do to support my family.”
Dean is perhaps best known for his role as DEA agent Hank Schrader in Breaking Bad during the show’s run from 2008 to 2013.
“Oh yeah, email and text, chat lines and we don’t bother each other too much,” he exclusively told Us in March 2025 of keeping in touch with his former costars. “But yeah, we talk a lot.”
Dean has continued acting since Breaking Bad, including a standout role in last year’s The Parenting opposite Lisa Kudrow and Parker Posey.
“Oh, it was like we had movie nights and game nights, and we would cook out together and all this kind of stuff. It was great,” he said of bonding with the film cast. “It was like one of the best off-set casts, off-set fun I’ve had with a cast. Lisa Kudrow is just [a] comic genius man. We met literally the first day I arrived.”
Playing a father in the horror comedy, Dean drew on his own experience.
“I found him rather quickly because I come from the Midwest,” he explained at the time. “I thought he was a Midwestern, square guy, but he loves his gay son. It was very important to me to have that in there.”
