The actor of Chilean origin, Pedro Pascal, has achieved great fame for his recent roles in series such as Narcos, The Mandalorian and The Last of Us.
Although he has great acting qualities, much of his success is attributed to his mother and his memory. She left years ago when Pedro was young, but he never stops remembering her and dedicating to her everything that she makes of him.
Pedro was born in Chile, just in the years when there were political problems. His parents, José Balmaceda and Verónica Pascal decided to take little Pedro and his older sister out of the country. That's how they ended up in the United States and settled in San Antonio, Texas.
That was where his father instilled in him a love for cinema. Pascal remembers that he dreamed of being Christian Bale on the Empire of the Sun movie poster.
Verónica, his mother, contributed to this fascination with acting and enrolled him in her local arts school.
“My mother and my driver's license saved me,” Pedro's cousin said he told a magazine. A friend of his mother's suffered a small accident and, since she couldn't go, she gave Pedro his tickets to see the play Angels in America. After watching the drama, Pedro felt for the first time that acting was more than a hobby: acting could be his life.
He later left San Antonio to enroll at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. Thanks to that he was able to obtain small roles in several TV series. He appeared on MTV's Undressed and had a brief appearance on the fourth season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The actor appeared in these programs with the credit of Pedro Balmaceda.
In 2000, when Pedro was 24 years old, his mother died suddenly under very shocking circumstances.
In an interview, the actor was honest: “The circumstances of my mother's death made it very difficult for us to remember her as the person she was.” He continued: “It hurts a lot. Sometimes I feel anguish and I try to deal with it in the best way possible because I know that my mother would not want me to do it any other way.”
“She was the love of my life. I think about her every day. I don't pray for her, so I can't say that I have a religious practice to feel close to her, but I live for her, even though she is gone,” the actor confessed.
Furthermore, he shared: “Losing the most important person in your life, discovering that something like this is possible and that what you fear most in life can happen, is an inexplicable and permanent moment. There is a before and after her death.”
Pedro reflected this by changing his last name: after the death of his mother, he decided to use his mother's last name. Additionally, he was happy with the change because it was easier to say “Pascal” than “Balmaceda,” which is difficult for many Americans to say.
His career slowed for a few years, he was typecast into minor, stereotypical Latino male roles, such as gang member and drug dealer. But in 2014, after 15 years of playing supporting roles in film and television, his breakout role as Prince Oberyn Martell in season 4 of the Game of Thrones series launched him into stardom. Thus, the roles would arrive that would give him unprecedented global and media reach.
Then came the leading roles in high-impact series such as Narcos, The Mandalorian, and more recently The Last of Us. His fame has placed him as the internet's favorite “daddy.”
However, fame has not kept him away from his family and he even accepts that he has become extremely overprotective of his family. “It could have to do with the fact that I don't have my own family and that my siblings and my chosen family are where I invest all my emotional energy,” Pascal explained.
Pedro has said that the recent global attention he has had has helped him realize that he is still in communication with his mother. He explained that he spoke to her recently while she was preparing to host Saturday Night Live.
“I was so scared that week that I started talking to her,” he said. After rehearsals in the days before the show, he added: “That terror was waiting for me, that fear of failing in front of the world. And then I talked to her, and it was really comforting.”
When asked what he said, Pascal replied: “I love you. I miss you. Thank you. I'm afraid. “I would love for you to help me believe in myself because I know you do.”
