11 things you probably didn't know about Pedro Pascal

He used to be a competitive swimmer.

Pascal was a fairly accomplished swimmer as a child, competing in the Texas state championships when he was 11.

But he dropped the sport in favor of drama classes during his teens. 

When asked by Vanity Fair if he would ever take up competitive swimming again any time soon, Pascal nixed the idea.

"I'm too lazy," he said. 

Pedro Pascal was fired "close to 10 times" from waiter jobs when he was a struggling actor.

When Pascal was a struggling actor, he waited on tables to help make ends meet. Looking back on that trying period, however, he admitted he was a downright terrible waiter.

"I would say I was not a good waiter," he told Vanity Fair. "So many different reasons. If I liked you, I liked you. If I didn't, I didn't. And that didn't necessarily go well with having a bunch of customers. I was fired often, upwards of maybe close to 10 times."

To honor his mom, Pascal changed his professional name from his father's surname to his mother's.

While living in New York City to launch his career as an actor, Pascal's mother, a child psychologist, died. 

"She was always incredibly supportive — never a stage mom," Pascal told People. "I always felt like she knew something that I didn't." 

As a way of honoring her, he changed his professional name from his father's surname, Balmaceda, to his mother's, Pascal.

"None of my success would be real if it weren't for her," he added.

Pascal and Oscar Isaac are longtime friends.

Pascal and Isaac go way back. The two actors met in 2005 while in the off-Broadway production of "Beauty of the Father," where they were paid $500 a week. 

"The dream was to be able to pay rent," Isaac told Variety of their financial situation back then. "There wasn't a strategy. We were just struggling. It was talking about how to do this thing that we both love but seems kind of insurmountable."

While the two remain fast friends, even going so far as to sometimes celebrate New Year's Eve together, Pascal and Isaac's careers have taken off in a big way.

Pascal can currently be seen in HBO's "The Last of Us" and the forthcoming third season of "The Mandalorian."

Isaac, meanwhile, has carved out a name for himself in TV and film projects like "Moon Knight," "Dune," "Scenes from a Marriage," and "Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker." 

Pascal regularly checks out an Instagram fan account devoted to him being a heartthrob.

When Pascal is "feeling down," the actor likes to check out Instagram accounts dedicated to him, including @pedropascalfanaccount, an account with over 24,500 followers that regularly posts photos of him from his TV and film projects, press interviews, and fan encounters. 

The actor's own Instagram handle, @pascalispunk, which now has a whopping 2.7 million followers, was actually the result of a typo, he admitted.

"I meant to write 'pascalisapunk' when I created the Instagram account that I expected 12 people to follow for the rest of my life, and then it was 'pascalispunk," he told Vanity Fair. "I never knew what a big deal it would turn into. So I just never changed it. I just can't be bothered to change it now." 

Pascal was almost in a 2011 Wonder Woman TV adaptation prior to his role in "Wonder Woman 1984."

Pascal's villainous turn in Patty Jenkins' "Wonder Woman 1984" (2020) wasn't the actor's first brush with the Wonder Woman franchise.

The actor actually had a supporting role in David E. Kelley's 2011 TV pilot "Wonder Woman"  as Ed Indelicato, a police detective who was Diana Prince's (Adrianne Palicki) liaison to the LAPD. 

While the pilot had a lot of buzz going for it, NBC reportedly passed on the pilot because it was a "mess."  

"We made mistakes with ours," Kelley said of the pilot in 2013. "My only regret is we were never given a chance to correct them. We had a lot that was right about it and a great cast. In time, we could have fixed what we had done wrong, we just didn't get that chance." 

When Jon Favreau initially discussed "The Mandalorian" with Pascal, the actor thought he was going to play Boba Fett.

When Pascal was invited to speak with Jon Favreau about a potential Star Wars project that would eventually become "The Mandalorian," he was thrilled. 

"So we met in Jon's office, which was covered with story illustrations from this show — and I noticed the Mandalorian, a Boba Fett-looking character, immediately," Pascal told Disney's twenty-three magazine.

"I thought to myself, 'Oh, it's amazing that they are finally gonna get into this character.' Jon talked about the story, visuals, and tone. I thought it was amazing and finally asked, 'Well, who am I?' I'm pointing to different characters, creatures, and aliens in the concept art, and John just looked at me and said 'You're the Mandalorian.'"

Pascal, however, was confused. 

"I was like, 'What? I get to play Boba Fett?' He said, 'No, he's not Boba Fett. He's the Mandalorian.' I couldn't have imagined a better moment," Pascal recalled.

Things have a way of working out, of course. Pascal's star turn in "The Mandalorian" helped cement him as a leading man, paving the way for future opportunities, including "The Last of Us." 

Pascal's sister Lux Pascal is also an actor, as well as a transgender activist.

Pascal proudly posted a photo on Instagram in February of his sister Lux's cover for the Spanish-language Ya magazine, where she came out as a transgender woman. ("My sister, my love, our Lux," Pascal wrote in Spanish in the caption.)

His sister, for her part, said Pascal "has been an important part of this. He's also an artist and has served as a guide for me. He was one of the first people to gift me the tools that started shaping my identity."

Lux has since gone on to attend Juilliard for acting, where she performed in productions of "Hamlet," "The Seagull," and "Our Lady of 121st Street." 

Stunt doubles and stand-ins played Pascal's role in "The Mandalorian" for at least one entire episode.

While stunt doubles and stand-ins for roles are common in TV, they rarely replace an actor for an entire episode.

But for "The Mandalorian," season one, episode four, entitled "Sanctuary," director Bryce Dallas Howard told Vulture she didn't work with Pascal at all. 

"He was in rehearsals for 'King Lear' on Broadway, and so, while we were doing my episode, I wasn't working with Pedro," Howard explained. 

Howard instead said she worked primarily with Brendan Wayne, one of Pascal's doubles and the grandson of John Wayne. 

Howard added: "He absolutely just brought everything to that character, and we were able to find the moments and figure them out together." 

Pascal credits Nicolas Cage as his "biggest influence" as an actor.

Ask Pascal who his biggest influence as an actor is, and he'll readily answer Nicolas Cage. 

"I am his biggest fan," Pascal told Variety, who was sitting next to Cage then."I knew I wanted to be an actor quite young. I came up with this fantasy, because we would go to the movies so much as a family. So, as a child, the kinds of performances that were imprinted onto my experience were yours." 

One of the most surreal experiences for Pascal, as a result, was to shoot "The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent" with Cage in 2020.

In the comedy, where Cage plays a fictionalized version of himself, Pascal portrays Javi Gutierrez, a billionaire who pays Cage $1 million to attend his birthday bash. 

"I sat myself down — I didn't want to come at him physically, or anything like that," Pascal told GQ. "I guess it's maybe never appropriate, but particularly not so on our first flight during the earlier parts of the pandemic. And so gradually, we ran into each other at the hotel, and then at the fitting, and then on set shooting together. Then all of a sudden I'm his scene partner. It was pretty cool." 

For "The Last of Us," Pascal played the game, despite being told not to.

Although "The Last of Us" on HBO is a faithful adaptation of the bestselling PlayStation 3 video game, showrunner Craig Mazin reportedly told his cast not to play the game before production.

Pascal recently admitted to IGN however that he tried playing the game anyway but couldn't finish a certain level. 

"My nephews were watching me play and eventually got tired of my inability to complete the level, so they took my controller from me," Pascal said.

Despite not being a gamer, the actor gamely said he was "ready to become one."

He added: "I'm ready to retire and become a gamer, because I feel that if I become one all our systems will start crumbling down, and I'll never leave the house again."