“In my 30s I was supposed to have a career,” he says. “Past 29 without a career meant that it was over, definitely.” Feeling hopeless, Pascal started
“In my 30s I was supposed to have a career,” he says. “Past 29 without a career meant that it was over, definitely.” Feeling hopeless, Pascal started researching other professions. But whenever he came close to bailing on his dream, friends and family would step in. “When Pedro would say, ‘I’m going to nursing school’ or ‘I’m going to be a theater teacher,’ it was just like ‘No, no, no, no! You’re too good!’” says his older sister, Javiera Balmaceda, now a producer at Amazon Studios. “He’s wanted to be an actor since he was four years old. The one thing we’d never allow Pedro to do was give up.”
So Balmaceda would lend him $40 to make it through the weekend when he stopped by her office. Friends bought him groceries and took him to dinner. Neighbors helped take care of Gretta. His close friend Sarah Paulson gave him her per diem money from acting gigs and let him operate her sister’s car.
“Basically, everybody took care of me, well into my 30s,” he says. “I had angels around me the whole time.”
Today is Pascal’s first day off in ages. Last week he was in Tokyo at the semiannual Star Wars Celebration, promoting next summer’s release of Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu. He recently completed The Fantastic Four: First Steps and, in the morning, goes into production on the fresh Avengers: Doomsday. Besides the Fantastic Four reboot, he’s in two other summer movies showing off captivating fresh angles—playing the ultimate bachelor in Celine Song’s romance Materialists and a small-town mayor in Ari Aster’s American nightmare Eddington. Meanwhile, on the day we meet, the internet is still soggy with the grief of The Last of Us fans processing the fate of Pascal’s character, Joel, a good, broken man with the saddest eyes in the world.
The Fantastic Four’s Vanessa Kirby—who plays Sue Storm to Pascal’s stretchy genius, Reed Richards—tells me that her friend’s allure is “his immense vulnerability”: “He doesn’t have much armor, so he shows himself to you straight away, and you trust that person because he’s revealing himself to you in this very brave way.” Spike Jonze, who directed Pascal in an exuberant Apple ad that showcases the actor’s cheerful dance skills, has a unified field theory about why so many people are connecting with the 50-year-old actor who struggled to get hired for decades: “I think that he’s what we want in masculinity.” It’s not just about how rugged and alive Pascal is onscreen. It’s also his cheeky fun with fashion—chic black shorts and lipstick-red Valentino to the Met Gala in 2023, Saint Laurent thigh-high boots to the Last of Us season-two premiere. It’s how he bopped to Devo at the SNL50 concert. It’s how he publicly celebrated his younger sister, Lux Pascal, when she came out as transgender in 2021 and remains a passionate advocate of the community.
Just how smitten is the world with this actor? While hosting the Critics Choice Awards, Chelsea Handler cited 2023 as “the year everyone became horny for Pedro Pascal.” A New Yorker cartoon featured a therapist reassuring his client, “It’s not strange at all—lately, a lot of people are reporting that their faith in humanity is riding entirely on whether or not Pedro Pascal is as nice as he seems.”
“Well, then,” Ramsey tells me, “I’m relieved for humanity.”
Sweater and socks by Prada; underwear, his own.Photograph by Sølve Sundsbø; styled by Beat Bolliger.
When I first meet Pascal, it’s in the lobby of his swanky hotel. I go in for a handshake, and he wraps me in a hug instead. On our way outside we pass a bar, and he offers to make me a cocktail, then whisks me out the front door into a waiting black BMW. “Baby, I’m taking you on a date!” he says.
Pascal is happiest and most comfortable when the people around him are content and comfortable, and because he is naturally so curious and toasty, there’s a sense of immediate safety with him. You’re grateful to be in his lightweight.
As we’re getting in the car, Pascal mentions his mother: He was 24 when she died by suicide. My own mother died by suicide when I was 18, a fact I wasn’t sure would be comfortable or appropriate to share. But then Pascal mentions that his mother got her PhD at San Antonio’s Trinity University, where I was a college freshman when my mother died. The coincidence is so uncanny that I find myself spilling. Pascal immediately takes my hand. “Whether we like it or not, we’re bonded,” he says.
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