Pedro Pascal’s Professional Last Name Is a Sweet Tribute to His Late Mother

Pedro Pascal has been an actor for years, but he truly shot to fame after appearing in the first season of The Last of Us. Since then, he’s garnered plenty of media attention, even becoming a meme after being recorded eating a sandwich.

Pascal might have a successful acting career, but you probably didn’t know that “Pedro Pascal” isn’t his real name. Rather, it’s a sweet nod to his late mother.

What is Pedro Pascal’s real name?

Pedro Pascal certainly rolls off the tongue, but he didn’t change his stage name for that reason. Rather, it was a decision he made to honor his late mother, Verónica Pascal. Pascal’s mother died before she could see him reach full fame, and the two had such as close relationship. She died by suicide in 2000, and it was after that that Pascal decided to change his name. His real name is Pedro Balmaceda.

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Pascal told People in 2020 that his mother always cared deeply for him and never pushed him to do anything he didn’t want to do. “She was always incredibly supportive, never a stage mom,” he said. “I always felt like she knew something that I didn’t.”

Pascal has said his parents always gave him everything he needed, but the family didn’t have it easy growing up. They had joined the opposition movement in Chile, and as a result, they had to flee the country when Pascal was only nine years old. They first went to Europe and spent time in Denmark before winding up in the United States, where they sought asylum. Eventually, Pascal’s parents moved back to Chile, though he stayed in the United States to finish school at New York University; he lost his mother only two years after he graduated.

Pascal’s acting career has taken off in recent years

Pascal loved acting, but it wasn’t until he landed a Game of Thrones role in 2014 that he was finally put on the map. And since then, he’s only received more and more coveted roles. By 2015, he had landed the role of Javier Peña in Netflix’s Narcos, which told the story of cartel kingpin Pablo Escobar.

Pascal had been in a number of high-profile movies in the late 2010s, including “The Equalizer 2,” but it wasn’t until his role in The Last of Us that he became a household name. The highly-anticipated HBO series, based on a video game of the same name, detailed life after a horrific zombie apocalypse. Only the show’s first season has premiered, and Pascal starred alongside Bella Ramsey. He skyrocketed to even greater fame, with people falling in love with both him and his character. Pascal even became a meme, where he could be spotted all over social media while biting into a sandwich.

Pedro Pascal does have a nice ring to it, but it’s even better that it’s actually a sweet tribute to his late mother, to whom he remained close up until her death.