By Sondra Barr
Pedro Pascal is now recognized around the globe – even when he’s hiding behind a Mandalorian helmet – but it’s the heart he brings to every role, an emotional range as rich as it is authentic, that has propelled him on a journey into the cultural zeitgeist. But now, at 50 years old, with two major blockbuster TV roles under his belt and a slate of upcoming projects as ambitious as they are high-profile, Pascal has become something more than a star. He’s become a cultural moment.
Born in Chile and raised between Texas and California after his parents fled the Pinochet regime as political refugees, Pascal’s path to stardom was neither smooth nor swift. As he told Vanity Fair, “I still awe at the opportunity that was handed to me by David Benioff, Dan Weiss, and Carolyn Strauss” when they cast him in Game of Thrones. “Without Thrones, I would not have had Narcos, The Mandalorian, or The Last of Us.”
But before Westeros came years of lean times and near-misses. After graduating from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, Pascal scraped by with theater gigs and small TV parts, getting fired from more waitstaff jobs than he can count. He told Esquire. “I guess that, and this delusional self-determination, and no real skill at anything else, is what kept me going.”
It was during those lean years in New York that he formed lifelong friendships with fellow actors, including Sarah Paulson. She told Esquire that she sometimes gave him her per diem from acting jobs so he could eat. “You just want him to succeed,” Paulson said. “And that, to me, is the sign of a major movie star.”
Pascal’s breakout came in 2014 as Oberyn Martell, the Red Viper of Dorne, whose short but unforgettable arc in Game of Thrones showcased his magnetic screen presence. He followed it up with Netflix’s Narcos, where his turn as DEA agent Javier Peña proved he could hold a show’s center of gravity. But the real seismic shift came with two wildly different roles: masked bounty hunter Din Djarin in Disney+’s The Mandalorian, and rugged survivor Joel in HBO’s The Last of Us.
“He’s a part of some spectacularly successful things,” Paulson said, “but sometimes in those situations, the show is the superstar. It’s really exciting to see that he is the thing that is becoming the superstar out of this.”
Both roles cemented Pascal as the go-to figure for complicated, emotionally armored father figures. But don’t let the paternal archetype fool you: Pascal is not formulaic. As Last of Us creator Craig Mazin noted, “There are actors you feel slightly intimidated by, and then there are actors you want to take home and hug and give some soup. And he’s both. Somehow he’s both.”
Yet with all this success, Pascal remains unmoored from the trappings of celebrity. “I had a moment of thinking; ‘You’re in your 40s and you don’t own a home? Grow up,’” he told Esquire. “But I’m relinquishing expectations around what it is to be middle-aged and what it means to be fully grown up.”
He speaks candidly about self-doubt and the many points when he almost gave up. “My vision of it was that if I didn’t have some major exposure by the time I was 29 years old, it was over,” he said. “So, I was constantly readjusting what it meant to commit my life to this profession.”
Part of what makes Pascal so magnetic is the tension between his vulnerability and strength. He’s someone who survived hardship not with cynicism, but with warmth. According to multiple interviewers, he laughs easily, often at himself, and tells stories with the enthusiasm of someone still surprised by his own trajectory.
His personal story is as remarkable as his professional one. As he shared on the Smartless podcast, his family’s flight from Chile involved hiding a wounded opposition member from Pinochet’s regime, going underground, and ultimately scaling the walls of the Venezuelan embassy to seek asylum. “And it worked,” Pascal said.
His mother, a child psychologist, and father, a fertility doctor, would eventually settle in the U.S. and raise Pedro and his siblings between Texas and California. When his mother died in 2000, he adopted her surname professionally. “I just always wanted to be like, I’m here,” he said of stepping in to help care for his younger siblings.
That same mix of loyalty and resilience defines his career. Asked by Vanity Fair about his process, Pascal said: “I think everyone has a method, and I admire, even envy, those that have more rigorous ones. It’s always important to read a room, but sometimes disrupting the room can help achieve something that serves the work.”
He doesn’t see himself as above the work, and in fact, often deflects praise. While he was hailed for his 2023 Saturday Night Live hosting gig, Pascal demurred: “SNL was all of those challenges stuffed into one week of my life…I could not have had a better time.”
From indie plays to Marvel blockbusters (he’ll soon debut as Reed Richards in The Fantastic Four: First Steps), Pascal remains impossible to pin down. He can go toe-to-toe with Nicolas Cage in The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent (2022), then turn around and voice a tender fox in The Wild Robot (2024). He weaves in and out of internet memes with the same ease he brings to monologues. Whether he’s leaning on furniture mid-panic attack in The Last of Us or munching a sandwich in a viral YouTube clip, there’s a rare relatability to his presence.
“It was really intimidating,” Pascal said to Men’s Journal this year. “I relied on the people that I was around to hold me to the experience and help get me through it. Stepping into something like Game of Thrones and then going into the early days of Netflix with Narcos and then Star Wars and the world of video games with The Last of Us, each time I’ve felt like I couldn’t top how intimidating the last one was.”
“They’re all scary because you really want to make people happy, especially if it’s something that’s widely known with particular expectations around it because you want those expectations to be met,” Pascal continued.
“You also want to be authentic to yourself so that it can be the best that it can be for anybody who wants to be entertained by a story and travel with us into this world.”
Hailed by Time as one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2023, Pascal is proof that stardom doesn’t have to come at the cost of authenticity. He doesn’t posture. He doesn’t pretend. He simply keeps showing up, doing the work, and letting the world catch up.
In a landscape that often favors spectacle over soul, Pedro Pascal is a reminder that living well means showing up fully—heart, humor, and all. His rise may have taken time, but in a culture that craves truth and connection, he’s right on time.
Read the issue here: https://issuu.com/livingwellmags/docs/texoma_area_living_well_magazine_may_june_2025
