The 2024 SAG Award for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Drama Series is now in the hands of The Last of Us star Pedro Pascal. As the actor headlines the media pages, people are increasingly itching for details about his personal life.
Pedro Pascal isn’t a new name in the Hollywood scene. The 48-year-old actor has been working in the American film industry since he was 21 in 1996. However, it was only after nearly two decades of taking small roles in movies and television shows, that Pascal rose to prominence for portraying Oberyn Martell in the fourth season of the HBO fantasy series Game of Thrones (2014).
Following GOT, Pascal appeared as the DEA agent Javier Peña in the Netflix crime series Narcos (2015–2017) and earned even greater fame. Though fairly popular at this point, Pascal entered the A-list after leading the Disney Plus Star Wars series The Mandalorian as the title character. But despite his long and impressive filmography, his 2023 post-apocalyptic drama The Last of Us is what brought him his much-deserved critical acclaim.
As his popularity skyrockets following his multiple SAG-wins, there’s also a rise in intrigue about Pascal’s personal life and history. Here’s all about his background and ethnicity:
Where is Pedro Pascal from?
Pedro Pascal, born José Pedro Balmaceda Pascal traces his ancestry to the Allende and Balmaceda families, the Chilean family groups of Spanish and Basque descent, respectively. He was born on April 2, 1975, in Santiago, Chile, to child psychologist Veronica Pascal Ureta and fertility doctor Jose Balmaceda Riera. After the death of Pascal’s mother in 2000, he began using her surname professionally as a tribute to her.
Pascal’s family sought refuge in the Venezuelan embassy in Santiago just nine months after he was born, and later obtained political asylum in Denmark. The family then ultimately emigrated to the United States, raising Pascal in San Antonio, Texas, before relocating to Orange County, California, when he was 11 years old. This makes Pascal a Chilean-American actor, hailing originally from an upper-class family in the Latin American country Chile.
Pedro Pascal’s ethnicity
According to Ethnicelebs, Pedro Pascal’s ethnicity is Chilean — including Spanish, Basque, Indigenous, 1/16th French, 1/64th Welsh, remote Portuguese, as well as Argentinian, Bolivian, Mexican, Panamanian, and Peruvian roots. Pascal’s paternal grandmother was born in Palma de Mallorca, Spain, while his mother’s surname Pascal originates from a French maternal great-great-grandfather.
If you’re wondering where his extended family hails from, Pascal’s great-grandfather Luis was born in Tacna, Peru, as the son of Pierre Gastón Pascal Thierry, who was born in Aquitaine, France, and of Leonor Valdés Vizcarra, who was Peruvian. While Pascal traces his ancestry to multiple ethnic groups, we could say that he is essentially Hispanic.
