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All of Hollywood is obsessed with the Chilean actor. Hollywood and what is not Hollywood. Pedro Pascal (Santiago, 1975) loves children, young people, fathers, mothers and, above all, producers. He has spent the game participating in four iconic series on four different streaming platforms: Game of Thrones (HBO), Narcos (Netflix), The Mandalorian (Disney+) andThe Last of Us (HBO). It should be a record to face the four horsemen of the TV Apocalypse and come out not unscathed, but strengthened. Proof enough is Almodóvar's offer to co-star with Ethan Hawke in his Strange Way of Life, a short film that opens in theaters this Friday.

Although there are many explanations behind this new fan phenomenon, Pascal himself does not understand it. "Why are they so obsessed with me? I'm just an old man. Look at Harry Styles or anybody else," he laughs in an interview cut that went viral. 20 seconds are enough to make it clear why: the interpreter is an inexhaustible source of talent, charisma and sympathy.

They weren't always recognized, of course. Talent and charisma. He was close to 40 when he landed his first big role as Prince Oberyn Martell in the fourth season of Game of Thrones. He had previously accepted occasional jobs on series such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Law and Order, The Mentalist and Homeland. They did not bring him the success he aspired to within the profession, but they fattened his resume and allowed him to pay the rent of his apartment in New York.

Pascal had moved to the Big Apple in the mid-90s to pursue acting at the Tisch School of Arts. As a child he competed in state swimming tournaments; He was pretty good, although he wasn't passionate about it. He didn't see himself as a professional swimmer. At 11 he decided to leave the pools and sign up for theater classes. And suddenly, everything clicked. Training at the Tisch School became his goal.

From the prestigious school, to situate us, celebrities such as his current classmate Ethan Hawke, Anne Hathaway and Elizabeth Olsen have come out. Also Sarah Poulson, protagonist of American Horror Story and Ratched, whom Pascal calls "his New York family". Poulson helped him in those days of precariousness, when Pedro Pascal did not make ends meet, transferring the money from his diets so that he could eat.

His time as a mediocre actor whose maturity was beginning to break down the door like Jack in The Shining was not the first bump Pascal had overcome. I had plenty of resilience since childhood. With only nine months of life, he arrived with his parents to the United States fleeing the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. His family, an outspoken supporter of Salvador Allende, received political asylum in Denmark until they found work in Texas.

The actor never forgot roots that he barely had time to cling to. When Pinochet was overthrown, he and his parents made it a habit to spend a few weeks each summer in Pucón, a town 800 kilometers from his native Santiago, Chile. That newspaper summer reunion with the mother country tanned him as a political activist: in 2021 he supported the then presidential candidate, Gabriel Boric, and in February of this year he finished his role as host on Saturday Night Live wearing a shirt with a fist and the Chilean flag. A month later it reached the first position in the iMDB ranking that measures the popularity of stars.

Thanks to his collection of fifty characters, Pascal is today one of the most famous faces of television science fiction and action cinema. And one of the most beloved. José Pedro Balmaceda Pascal is a type of natural attainable and earthly attractiveness. Of an uncomplex masculinity and a sexual ambiguity that fascinates all audiences. In his time at Narcos he shared the screen with his younger sister, who then appeared in the credits as Lucas Balmaceda and today signs contracts as Lux Pascal. Their social networks are full of messages of support for the LGTBIQ + collective; he himself lived the transition of Lux closely and wanted to give it visibility.

Almodóvar has found his new muse in the same man who one day wears a Loewe tailor suit and the next puts on the devil costume at the Met Gala. Because Pascal is the same man who gorges himself on popcorn with Oscar Isaac doing a RuPaul marathon and at the same time boasts of having kissed Heidi Klum in a video clip of Sia. The same man who sleeps with half Westeros and then tries to save humanity from an apocalyptic fate dominated by mushrooms. What a strange way of life.

  • cinema
  • Series
  • Actors
  • Game of Thrones
  • Pedro Almodóvar

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