Anna Gunn sought police help over Breaking Bad related death threat

Actress Anna Gunn once enlisted the help of police after an angry Breaking Bad fan appeared to threaten her life online.

Gunn, who starred as Skyler White on the drama, has been vocal regarding the hateful responses to her character, who was married to the show's drug-dealing Walter White, played by Bryan Cranston.

In 2013, she wrote an op-ed for The New York Times, revealing that she found the attitudes "heavily sexist", but she has now revealed that she once felt so nervous for her safety, she was forced to seek out members of law enforcement.

"There was this college student who had just watched an episode where Skyler makes Walt take (son) Walt Jr.'s car back, and she was very upset about that," Anna tells the London Evening Standard. "So she tweeted: 'Can somebody tell me where I can find Anna Gunn so I can kill her?' Which to me sounds like a death threat. So the police checked it out."

The 50 year old added that the Twitter user failed to understand the seriousness of her comment.

"She said, 'Oh, I just saw the episode, you know.' And they (police bosses) said, 'Well, you did use her actual name.' And she said, 'Oh, I know but... I guess there's not free speech,'" Gunn adds.

Despite struggling to accept the response to Skylar during the show's run from 2008 to 2013, Gunn considers her time on the hit programme a valuable learning experience.

"I feel like I came to understand what it was, which was just the undercurrent of extreme sexism," she shares. "The idea of gender roles being so deeply ingrained - it was shocking to me. But I'm not sorry it happened, because it put me out on the other side going, 'Huh, that's really interesting.'

"And I felt compelled to say something, not necessarily for myself, but for my daughters and other women. The vehemence of it, and the fact that it was just allowed - it was the id gone wild."