Pedro Pascal almost quit acting after years of rejection
The Last of Us actor Pedro Pascal has confessed that he considered quitting acting after years of rejection.
During a recent conversation with Esquire, Pascal explained that he spent much of the 1990s working as a waiter. “I was getting my ass fucking kicked,” he recalled, referring to the countless unsuccessful auditions he went through. “I died so many deaths”.
“I guess [this] delusional self-determination, and no real skill at anything else, is what kept me going,” the actor added. In the same interview, Pascal’s close friend, American Horror Story’s Sarah Paulson, explained that she supported him while he struggled to make a name for himself. “There were times when I would give him my per diem from a job I was working on so that he could have money to feed himself,” she said.
Pascal explained that he eventually put an ultimatum on his career. “My vision of it was that if I didn’t have some major exposure by the time I was 29 years old, it was over, so I was constantly readjusting what it meant to commit my life to this profession and giving up the idea of it looking like I thought it would when I was a kid.”
At one point, he considered quitting altogether, having thought to himself: “‘You’re in your forties and you don’t own a home? Grow up’… There were so many good reasons to let that delusion go.”
Pedro Pascal is currently one of the biggest names in Hollywood and stars in two hit series: The Mandalorian and The Last of Us.
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