Is Pedro Pascal the biggest movie star on the planet right now? Consider the projects the 50-year-old Chilean-American actor has either recently completed or has in the pipeline, and this isn’t such a far-fetched claim. In a couple of months, he’ll be fronting Marvel’s flagship Fantastic Four reboot, playing the rubber-limbed Reed Richards, before reprising the role in next year’s Avengers: Doomsday, a film that’s shaping up to be one of the most lucrative ever made. He is also the title star – if not technically the face – of the first Star Wars film in seven years, the forthcoming The Mandalorian & Grogu, a follow-up to the three-season Disney+ series he also spearheaded. Over on HBO, he is one of two leads of The Last of Us, the buzzy, Emmy-winning apocalypse drama returning this week for season two, and just arrived on home release is Gladiator II, in which he enjoys a chunky role as an uxorious Roman general.
Take a breath, because we’re not done yet. Pascal has two films coming out over the next month: action comedy Freaky Tales (in cinemas 18 April) and comedy of errors The Uninvited (9 May). There’s a plum part in Celine Song’s forthcoming Materialists – the filmmaker’s first since her Oscar-nominated debut Past Lives – as one vertex of a love triangle (Chris Evans and Dakota Johnson being the others). And then there’s Eddington, a neo-western from Midsommar and Hereditary director Ari Aster, placing Pascal next to Joaquin Phoenix, Emma Stone and Austin Butler. Pascal has rapidly become one of the industry’s most in-demand actors, a ubiquitous and widely liked screen presence. But there’s nonetheless something peculiar about his rise, which seems to have transpired with a force and speed that almost defy explanation. Stardom like this manifesting after half a century on earth is rare, if not quite unheard of.
