Pedro Pascal is Hollywood’s “It” Actor of the Moment

Pedro Pascal is the man of the moment. He is the leading actor in two of the most popular shows streaming now: The Last of Us, on HBO Max, which just finished this past week, and The Mandalorian, whose third season has been available on Disney+ since March 1st. But behind the incredible success the actor is having now is a difficult childhood that took place in South America.

José Pedro Balmaceda Pascal was born in Santiago, Chile on April 2nd, 1975, the son of Verónica Pascal Ureta and José Balmaceda Riera, and brother to Javiera, Nicolás, and Lux, who is an actress and transgender activist.

Who are Pedro Pascal Parents?

His mother, Verónica Pascal Ureta, was the cousin of Andrés Pascal Allende, the nephew of socialist Chilean President Salvador Allende. Andrés was the leader of the Movement of the Revolutionary Left, an urban guerrilla group dedicated to overthrowing the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, and had to hide in Pedro’s house after the military coup.

Pascal’s parents supported Allende and the resistance groups against Pinochet and, because of this, his family had to escape Chile when he was just nine months old, seeking refuge in Denmark. They ultimately moved to the United States, where Pascal was raised in Orange County, California, and San Antonio, Texas. In school he suffered bullying for being an immigrant and because his last name, Balmaceda, was not easy for his classmates to pronounce. He turned to theater as an escape.

By the time he was eight, his family could take regular trips back to Chile to visit his 34 cousins. In 2021, he was vocal about his support for the then-candidate and current president of Chile, Gabriel Boric.

José Balmaceda, his father, a fertility doctor, had legal problems when he worked in an assisted reproduction clinic and was accused of fraud and switching frozen embryos, according to the LA Times. The clinic ended up closing after rumors circulated that babies had died in his clinic. While this scandal ruined his reputation in the US, he has been able to continue his career in Chile, where he now resides.  

At the age of 24, tragedy struck Pedro and his family: sometime after his parents separated, his mother died by suicide. Pedro would later create his stage name by changing his last name, Balmaceda, to his mother’s, Pascal, to honor her legacy.

Pedro Pascal, the Chilean actor of the moment

From a young age, Pedro knew he wanted to be an actor. He moved to New York City in 1993, where he studied Drama at Orange County High School of the Arts and New

York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. He began his career on the small screen, with series like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Touched by an Angel, and NYPD Blue.

After participating in enormously popular series such as Law and Order and The Mentalist, his big international break came due to Game of Thrones, where he participated as a recurring character for seven episodes, Oberyn Martell, and was even nominated for a SAG Award.

In the series Narcos, he played Javier Peña and the title role in The Mandalorian, which earned him a Critics Choice Awards nomination in 2021. 

His most recent show, The Last of Us, has once again catapulted him into global success. The series is one of the greatest video game adaptations ever, premiered by HBO Max in January 2023. Pedro plays Joel Miller, a man who becomes a bloodthirsty smuggler after the death of his daughter. When a fungal pandemic breaks out, Joel must protect Ellie, a young woman who is a key player in finding clues about immunity to the disease. The HBO Max production has confirmed its second season.

Fun fact about Pedro Pascal: the actor has never played a main character in a TV series that has had under 89% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. 

As for the cinema, Pedro Pascal has also found success with his performance as Whiskey in The Kingsman: The Golden Circle; as well as Maxwell Lord in Wonder Woman 1984.

Now, Pascal has become a global sensation on social media. In a recent interview on the Oscars red carpet, he even admitted that he has a secret account on TikTok, where he has gone viral as a ‘daddy.’ A few weeks ago, he asked himself “what is happening to people that they like an old man like me? I don’t understand, how can all this happen? Let them focus on Harry Styles.”