José Pedro Balmaceda Pascal (Spanish: [xoˈse ˈpeðɾo‿βalmaˈseða pasˈkal]; born April 2, 1975) is a Chilean and American actor. Known for his portrayals of parental figures on screen and stage, he has received numerous accolades including an Actor Award, in addition to nominations for a Golden Globe Award and four Primetime Emmy Awards. Time magazine named him one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2023.
After nearly two decades of taking small roles on stage and television, Pascal's breakout roles came as Oberyn Martell in the fourth season of the HBO fantasy series Game of Thrones (2014) and as Javier Peña in the Netflix crime series Narcos (2015–2017). He achieved international stardom for his leading roles as Din Djarin in the Disney+ science fiction series The Mandalorian (2019–2023) and Joel Miller in the HBO post-apocalyptic drama series The Last of Us (2023–present), earning him a reputation for portraying adoptive father figures. His performance in The Last of Us earned him numerous accolades, including an Actor Award for Outstanding Male Actor in a Drama Series.
In film, Pascal is known for portraying Reed Richards / Mister Fantastic in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, beginning with The Fantastic Four: First Steps (2025) and the upcoming Avengers: Doomsday (2026). He has also starred in the films Wonder Woman 1984 (2020), The Wild Robot (2024), Gladiator II (2024), Materialists (2025), and The Mandalorian and Grogu (2026).
On stage, Pascal has appeared in various theater productions. He made his Broadway debut as Edmund in a 2019 adaptation of King Lear.
José Pedro Balmaceda Pascal was born on April 2, 1975, in Santiago, Chile, to Verónica Pascal Ureta (1953–2000), a child psychologist, and José Balmaceda Riera (1948–), a reproductive endocrinologist. Pascal has an older sister, film and television producer Javiera Balmaceda, a younger sister, actress Lux, and a younger brother. Pascal's paternal grandmother, Juanita Riera Bauzá, was born in Palma de Mallorca, and was the sister of Fernando Riera, a professional association football player and coach.
The seventh great-grandson of Mateo de Toro Zambrano and also descendant of José Santiago Aldunate y Toro, Pascal is related to the aristocratic Alessandri, Allende, and Balmaceda families. Pascal is the great-nephew of Laura Allende, a politician and sister of Salvador Allende, President of Chile, and the second cousin of Denise Pascal, a Socialist Party politician, and Andrés Pascal Allende, a sociologist, former Secretary General of the Movement of the Revolutionary Left and prominent member of the Chilean Resistance and Solidarity Movement.
Two years before Pascal's birth, the democratically elected socialist government of President Salvador Allende was overthrown by General Augusto Pinochet, leading to the country becoming a military dictatorship. Both of Pascal's parents were listed as enemies of the state by the Pinochet regime and the family eventually fled Chile when he was nine months old, after seeking refuge in the Venezuelan embassy in Santiago for six months. The family later received political asylum in Denmark, before settling in the United States, where Pascal was raised in San Antonio, Texas, until they relocated to Orange County, California, when he was eleven years old. By the time he was eight years old, his family regularly visited Chile to see his 34 cousins.
He pursued acting at the Orange County School of the Arts and graduated in 1993, before attending New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, where he graduated in 1997. His parents returned to Chile in 1995 after his father Dr. José P. Balmaceda was accused of stealing fertility patients' eggs and embryos and implanting them in other women without their knowledge and consent. After his mother's death, he began using his maternal surname professionally as a tribute to her and because he felt that people in the US had difficulty pronouncing his paternal surname, Balmaceda.
Early in his career, Pascal appeared in several television series, including Buffy the Vampire Slayer, NYPD Blue, The Good Wife, Nurse Jackie, and Homeland. Pascal experienced hard times during that point in his career; besides working in small acting and theatre roles, he took jobs waiting at restaurants. Pascal admitted that he was fired "often, upwards of, I don't know, maybe close to 10 times". In times of extreme hardship, Pascal's close friend Sarah Paulson would give him her per diem money "so that he could have money to feed himself." At a point when he found difficulty in affording medical care, only having less than seven dollars in his bank account, he received a residual check from his role in Buffy, which helped him to restabilize his finances and allowed him to continue pursuing acting.
Pascal is a member of New York City's LAByrinth Theater Company. He received the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award and Garland Award for his role in the International City Theater production of Orphans, and has performed in classical and contemporary works. In 2005, Pascal made his feature film debut in Julia Solomonoff's Sisters. For Pascal's role, Solomonoff was looking for candidates with strong English-language skills. In addition to meeting this requirement, Pascal (then credited as Balmaceda) was found to be "someone with a very special face, very photogenic, with a kind of mystery" by Solomonoff. In 2010, he wrote a play, directed by Sarah Silverman, Flaca Loves Bone, about four siblings who meet in a snowy wood to uncover a family secret. Also in 2010, Pascal made his directorial debut with Killing Play, written by David Anzuelo, at Rattlestick Playwrights Theater. He also directed underneathmybed and Yosemite there. He was cast in the pilot for the 2011 Wonder Woman television adaptation as Ed Indelicato, Wonder Woman's liaison to the LAPD, but the show was not picked up.
2014–2018: Breakthrough and rise to fame
In 2014, Pascal portrayed the character Oberyn Martell in the fourth season of HBO's critically acclaimed television series Game of Thrones. The season aired from April 6 to June 15, 2014, and Pascal's performance as the passionate and vengeful Dornish prince garnered significant praise from both critics and audiences, with numerous publications, including CNET, The Mary Sue, Time, and Esquire naming Martell as one of the best characters in the show. The Los Angeles Times praised him as a sex symbol in the role, calling it "the real tipping point in his career". Pascal stated that he was a huge fan of the show before being cast as Oberyn and was ecstatic to join. As part of the ensemble, he has received an Actor Award nomination for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series.
In 2015, Pascal portrayed the vampire Max in Bloodsucking Bastards. In April, Pascal co-starred with Heidi Klum in the music video for Sia's "Fire Meet Gasoline". In August, Pascal gained further recognition for his portrayal as Javier Peña, based on a real-life DEA agent, in the popular Netflix crime drama series Narcos. The show's two first seasons depict the rise and fall of the infamous drug lord Pablo Escobar and the subsequent Medellín Cartel, as the show's focus shifted to the Cali Cartel for its third and final season, Pascal took on the role of both lead actor and narrator.
In 2016, he portrayed mercenary Pero Tovar in the fantasy action film The Great Wall, alongside Matt Damon, and directed by Zhang Yimou. Set against the backdrop of the Great Wall of China, the film follows European mercenaries who become embroiled in a battle against ancient creatures threatening humanity. Despite the film's visually stunning production and ambitious scope, it received mixed reviews for its narrative and character development. Filmed on location in Qingdao, China. Pascal has voiced his admiration for Zhang, whom he had been a fan of during his youth.
In 2017, Pascal portrayed the charismatic and skilled operative within the Statesman organization, Jack Daniels, also known as Agent Whiskey, in Matthew Vaughn's Kingsman: The Golden Circle. Writing for Collider, Chris Sasaguay called his character "one cool cowboy", observing his "genuine love for getting into a cutthroat brawl", and praising the "playful side that comes so easily to Pascal [...] which isn't lost in playing Whiskey, turning him into a worthy new character to stand beside the Kingsman agents".