Aaron Paul 'Begged' Fiancée to Marry Him

Think romance is dead?

Spend a moment talking to Aaron Paul about his fiancée Lauren Parsekian and you’ll be convinced it has never been more alive.

“I’m the luckiest man on the planet,” the Smashed actor tells PEOPLE. “It doesn’t make sense to me. The way she looks at me … she has that magical glow about her.”

Paul – who is currently in London working on a film adaptation of Nick Hornby’s novel A Long Way Down – recently revisited the spot in Paris where he popped the question.

“We got engaged over New Year’s and I walked from the Eiffel Tower to St. Germain yesterday and I went to the stoop, the little step where I proposed to Lauren – and I took a picture of it and I sent it to her,” he says.

“It’s just this little courtyard outside of this hotel, and we were just dancing to édith Piaf by ourselves on New Year’s and then I begged her to marry me,” he says of the proposal.

In his latest film, Smashed, Paul, 33, finds himself in a different kind of romance. He plays half of a married couple whose mutual love of alcohol unites them until one decides to get sober.

“I drank – a lot,” he says of preparing for the role. “I filmed myself drinking and just being severely intoxicated. And just studying those videos and then watching drunk people on YouTube.”

Paul’s Breaking Bad costar Bryan Cranston is also opening at the box office this weekend in the Ben Affleck directed Argo.

“It’s great, it’s because of Breaking Bad really that we’re in these films right now. It just opened up so many doors throughout the past four or five years,” he says.

With the second installment of the AMC series’ final season slated to began filming in December, Paul admits the show’s success blindsided him.

“When I read it I thought it was the most brilliant thing I’ve ever read but I told myself ‘There’s no way in hell this is gonna get picked up. There’s not a chance.'”

But after five seasons and two Emmys for himself, he knows saying goodbye won’t be easy.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” he says jokingly. “We’re such a family and I love all of them so much.”