Pedro Pascal – "I'm Not a Tough Guy."

Pedro pascal cares about you. He's also self-conscious about caring about you. This is exactly what makes him great.

- By Hemal Jhaveri. Photographs by Peter Yang

Pedro Pascal is a little too nice, actually. Too many hugs. So many polite refusals of snacks. On the set of a photo shoot for this interview, there's an evident tension inside him. He retreats into the aloofness of celebrity, but he is also eager to connect. He seems to enjoy having his picture taken, but he gets shy when the photographer moves in for a close-up. It's in his nature to be open, but he holds a lot of himself back. He's not too far off, in fact, from the anonymous bounty hunter he plays in The Mandalorian. He wants to take off the mask and let people see his face, but he doesn't want to deal with the fallout.

Too bad. Not only is Pascal returning for season three of The Mandalorian, he's also starring in HBO's The Last of Us, probably the biggest video-game-to-TV adaptation of all time. In that now oh-so-recognizable face of his, one senses, well, shock. It's unthinkable-magazine covers, TV stardom, all of it-for a kid who wrapped himself up in '80s movies and late-night HBO after his family fled Augusto Pinochet's dictatorship in Chile, seeking political asylum in Denmark before eventually ending up in the United States. Pascal always dreamed of being a performer, yes. And he spent years kicking around with small television roles and New York theater gigs before getting his eyes gouged out in Game of Thrones. But he never imagined becoming Hollywood's go-to reluctant father figure. You know, famous.