Pedro Pascal experienced this series of tragedies before achieving his great success in Hollywood | News from Mexico

USA.- Peter Pascal has captivated television audiences with his thrilling portrayal of a courageous father trying to survive in post-apocalyptic America, a role that has seen its star rise to the upper echelons of television fame. hollywoodwhich many actors can only dream of.

However, while her character in the mega-hit HBO The Last of Us confronts fictional fungus-infected monsters, away from the small screen, the actor from 47 years he had to make his way between their own real world demons to achieve a lasting career.

Like his role on the screen, joelthe Santiago de Chile native has faced an incredibly rocky road to stardom, both professionally and personally.

It may interest you: “The Last of Us” will have more than two seasons, say creators of the series

a very hard childhood

He previously detailed how his parents were forced into hiding when he was just four months old to evade capture during the dictatorship of Pinochet.

Pedro’s world was rocked once more when his father was caught up in a fertility scandal who accused him of mail fraud and tax evasionprompting him to flee the country ahead of trial with his family in tow.

However, the heartthrob of the moment would face an even more tragedy when his mother, whom he called “the love of his life”, took her own life.

A rising career

Pedro Pascal continued to work on his career despite previous tragedies, until finally getting a big break in 2014 that set him on a breakneck trajectory.

He Daily Mail has documented the rise of Pascal since Chilean migrant even a firm family name.

Pedro’s troubled childhood: The budding actor’s father fled trial over a fertility scandal before his mother later took her own life

Peter was born as Jose Pedro Balmaceda Pascal in Santiago, Chile, on April 2, 1975, the son of a child psychologist named Veronica Pascal and a fertility doctor, Jose Balmaceda.

When he was only four months old, his parents were forced to leave him and his sister with their aunt to avoid his capture during the repression of the then dictator Pinochet against his opposition. Six months later, the couple was able to scale the walls of the Venezuelan embassy and request asylum.

Talking about his struggles in a monologue from snlPeter said:

They were so brave. And without them, I wouldn’t be here in this wonderful country, and I certainly wouldn’t be here with you tonight.”

The family was able to move to Denmark before coming to the United States, where they first lived in San Antonio, Texas. They later moved back to Orange County, California, when he was 11 years old.

genuine love for cinema

From a very young age, the star fell in love with movies, as she told Variety that his parents often took him and his siblings to the movies to “soak up as much American culture as possible.”

He initially dreamed of being a competitive swimmer, participating in state championships until he was 11 years old, but then stopped to focus on strengthening his acting skills.

Pedro also told the magazine Interview in an interview that he turned to the cinema as a means of escape after facing a severe school bullying.

It didn’t fit in and I was pretty lonely. The way I spent my time, I started reading plays and renting the classics,” he explained.

After finishing high school, he studied acting at the Tisch School of the Arts from the University of New York City, graduating in 1997.

Her father’s fertility scandal

While he was in college, his father became embroiled in a fertility scandal that accused him of mail fraud and tax evasion.

According to the Orange County Register, Pedro’s father was caught “switching women’s frozen embryos without their knowledge” at the fertility clinic he helped run with two other men.

In 1995, the Orange County Register reported that Dr. Ricardo Asch, along with Pedro’s father, José, and Sergio Stone, had taken eggs from women without their permission and given them to other women who later had children. with those eggs,” said the report. “At least 15 live births resulted from the improper transfers, and the clinic was closed after the egg theft scandal.”

In addition, it said that “an audit determined that nearly $1 million in revenue from the clinic had gone unreported,” including “tens of thousands of dollars in cash payments from patients that were allegedly pocketed by doctors.”

Although Stone was convicted of the crimes, both José and Ricardo they fled the country before their trialsreturning José, the mother of Pedro and his two brothers to Chile.

Years later, in 2022, José finally pleaded guilty to tax fraud and turned himself in to the police. At the time, a hearing had been set for March 2022, but it is unclear what the outcome was.

Despite José’s scandalous past, he and Pedro they seem to be closesince the actor continues to share numerous photos with his father in instagram.

The terrible death of his mother

In 1999, Pedro faced the worst tragedy, when his mother committed suicide.

The protagonist of The Last of Us He has spoken on numerous occasions about the great impact his mother had on himand told People in 2020: “She was the love of my life”.

She was always incredibly understanding… I always felt like she knew something that I didn’t. None of my success would be real if it weren’t for her. I think about her every day. I don’t pray, so I can’t say I have a religious practice to feel close to it, but I live for it, even though it’s gone.

“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… The circumstances of my mother’s death made it very difficult for us. hard to remember her as the person she was“, he also admitted in a 2017 interview with the magazine Paula.

A pain that haunts him every day

The actor added, “It hurts so much…Sometimes I feel anguish and I try to cope in the best possible way, because I know my mother wouldn’t want me to do it any other way.”

After his death, Pedro decided to take his maiden name as a tribute to her, officially becoming his stage name Pedro Pascal. Although the fact that it was difficult for Americans to pronounce “Balmaceda” also played a role in his decision, he told Variety.

Pedro almost gave up on acting before landing his big role.

In the early years of his career, Pedro landed a series of small guest appearances on shows like The Good Wife, Homelands, The Mentalist, Law & Order: Criminal Intent, Law & Order: SVU and Graceland.

Earlier this month, Sarah Michelle Gellar45, caused a stir on the web when she shared a throwback photo of the hit TV series, Buffy The Vampire Slayer. In it, he was next to a young Peter who appeared in the season four premiere as a college student named Eddie, and even the most Buffy-obsessed fans couldn’t believe they missed out on his fleeting appearance on the teen show.

However, despite getting a number of supporting roleshis big break came in 2014, after he was chosen as Oberyn Martell in the fourth season of game of Thrones.

First of all, it was an iPhone selfie audition, which was unusual,” showrunner David Benioff recalled to Variety about Pedro’s audition for game of Thrones. “And this wasn’t one of the new iPhones with the fancy cameras. It looked like crap. It was shot vertically, everything was very amateurish… Except for the acting, which was intense, believable and perfect.”

Before landing her breakout role, the star admitted that almost gave up on actingafter spending years trying to break into the industry.

“There were times where I really really formulated what I would do (if I wasn’t acting). You would start putting together a fantasy,” she said. “You’d call it ‘the fantasy,’ but really what it felt like at the time were practical plans. I never knew what I could turn to because we (actors) are stupid, we don’t have any skills,” Pascal said.

flurry of offers

After his success in game of ThronesPedro received a flurry of offers, which led him to star in the series Narcos of Netflixthe movie Bloodsucking Bastards 2015 spy comedy Kingsman: The Golden Circlethe monster movie The Great Wall and The Equalizer 2 (with Denzel Washington).

But he did not stop there.

Pedro now has a very impressive resume, further bolstered by his appearances on triple frontier Netflix, Wonder Woman 1984 from DC, The Bubble by Judd Apatow and The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent (with Nicolas Cage)

Pedro’s recent success: how The Last of Us made him a constant household name

In recent months, he has become a household name and constant after returning to the spotlight due to his role in The Last of Us which came to a dramatic conclusion a couple of Sundays ago.

The HBO series, which follows Pedro’s character, Joel, and a young woman named Ellieinterpreted by Bella Ramseyas they try to survive the “zombie apocalypse”, is based on the video game by PlayStation of the same name, and has proven to be a success with both the public and critics, who hailed it as the best video game adaptation of all timedrawing more than 22 million viewers with its first episode.

Pedro previously spoke about working on the series in an interview with Wiredwhere he shared that he took on the role of Joel so he could Collaborate with one of your idols.

To be completely honest, I wanted to work with Craig Mazin, who did Chernobyl. Also, HBO is content that I literally grew up with,” he said.

The interpreter remarked that, although directly He didn’t try to emulate what Joel was like in the video game, it did draw inspiration from how the character was presented.

“It was important to me to play notes that were directly related to what was originally in the game: physically, visually, and vocally,” he said.

Another of his important roles in the Star Wars franchise

He’s also juggling a number of other projects, having returned to the spin-off of Star Wars, The Mandalorianafter the long-awaited third season of the series hit the screens at the beginning of March.

Pedro plays the main character, who is a devoted bounty hunter hailing from Mandalore, who has been entrusted with the care of a creature called Grogupopularly known as Baby Yoda.

It may interest you: Pedro Pascal stars in a dystopian parody of Super Mario Bros on SNL