Latest news with #Chilean-born
San Francisco Chronicle
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- San Francisco Chronicle
2025 is the year of Pedro Pascal. Here's why he's having a moment
A light, drizzly rain had started to pour, interrupting what began as a balmy March evening in Oakland, and Pedro Pascal was wistful. In exactly two weeks, he would turn 50, and he was feeling it. 'I chase nostalgia a lot, now that I'm getting older,' Pascal told the Chronicle. 'I'm a moviegoer more than I am anything else in life, to be honest.' As he walked the red carpet, then attended the premiere of the Oakland-shot ' Freaky Tales ' at the Grand Lake Theatre, and gently held court at the after-party at Dragon Gate in Jack London Square, Pascal seemed to be treasuring the experience, as if taking a career victory lap. But the end is hardly near. If Pascal is truly an alpha moviegoer, then he's been seeing a lot of Pedro Pascal movies lately. Over the past four months, beginning with April's release of ' Freaky Tales,' the Chilean-born actor has starred in four movies and one limited series. In May, he was featured in the second season of HBO Max's epic post-apocalyptic series ' The Last of Us,' for which he earned his fourth Emmy nomination. In June he co-starred with Dakota Johnson and Chris Evans in ' Materialists,' Celine Song's sharp takedown of the New York dating scene. In July, he is co-headlining in Ari Aster's pandemic potboiler ' Eddington ' and the Marvel superhero reboot ' The Fantastic Four: First Steps,' which opened Friday, July 25, and has already pulled a 2025-best $24.4 million in Thursday previews. It is so obvious: 2025 is the Year of Pascal. He's even on the cover of this month's Vanity Fair with the title, 'Everyone wants a piece of Pedro.' Indeed. Dial it back to 2024, when he appeared in four movies, including ' Gladiator II,' and that's eight movies in a year and a half. That's an amazing run for a longtime journeyman actor who began as a Spanish-speaking immigrant, although a privileged one: His aristocratic parents fled Augusto Pinochet's military dictatorship and eventually settled in San Antonio, then Southern California. But for more than a quarter of a century he had struggled, cobbling together a career with credits that include TV guest shots in 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer,' 'Touched By an Angel' and 'NYPD Blue' to name just a few. So why Pedro Pascal, and why now? Strangely, his big breakthrough was a role that hid his face. The Disney+ 'Star Wars' spinoff ' The Mandalorian ' (2019-23) starred Pascal as Din Djarin, the helmeted bounty hunter charged with protecting the Yoda-like Baby Grogu. He's never been off the A-list since. Pascal had been in high profile projects before — a recurring role in Season 4 of 'Game of Thrones' in 2014 and a co-lead in the Netflix series ' Narcos ' (2015-17). But 'The Mandalorian' made him flaming hot. To capitalize, he accepted the role as the villain in the 2020 pandemic box office casualty 'Wonder Woman 1984,' opposite Gal Gadot. To prove his versatility, he shaved off his trademark mustache. Big mistake. 'Strongly disagree with a clean shaven me,' Pascal groused to Variety recently. 'I was so appalled by the way I look in 'Wonder Woman 1984.'' Which brings up another part of the Pascal mystique. Has there been a Hollywood star as defined by his mustache since Burt Reynolds? That might be one key to Pascal, who in the eyes of many of his growing number of fans is getting better looking with age. Every scraggly facial hair, every crinkly wrinkle around the eyes, every graying hair of his unruly mop adds depth. The guy increasingly feels lived-in, like an REI-outfitted dreamboat. In 'Materialists,' Johnson, as a Manhattan matchmaker, calls his character 'perfect,' one who 'checks every box.' In 'The Last of Us,' he is confronted by a young woman seeking revenge for her father's death, a man he killed. Even as she is consumed by vengeance, the woman, played with wonderful bloodlust by Kaitlyn Dever, stops for a moment and observes, 'You actually are pretty handsome. Congrats on that.' In 'Eddington,' Joaquin Phoenix's sheriff with an inferiority complex is intimidated by the charisma of Pascal's small-town New Mexico mayor. And obviously, Pascal's role as Mr. Fantastic, stud scientist and astronaut in 'The Fantastic Four: First Steps,' speaks for itself. Forget the Silver Surfer; he's the Silver Fox. Yet sex appeal only partially explains Pascal's popularity. What has really made him a star is that we have come to instinctively trust him. In 'The Mandalorian,' 'The Last of Us' and 'The Fantastic Four: First Steps,' he's a protector. Pascal, who has a transgender sister, is that way in real life, too. In April he slammed an anti-trangender Instagram post by 'Harry Potter' author J.K. Rowling, calling it ' Heinous LOSER behavior,' just one example of his willingness to engage on social and political issues. But even in 'Freaky Tales,' in which he's a contract killer looking to reform, he's a man holding on to hard-won truth and experience. And that's ultimately what Pascal brings to the table. He doesn't have time for B.S. He's lived a life, and it shows, especially in those melancholy eyes that seem to say so much. That experience informs the sixth episode of the second season of 'The Last of Us,' which features some of his best acting and is one of the best hours of television this year.
The Age
16-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Age
An antidote for dark times: The quiet politics of the new Fantastic Four
A superhero film, with lavish sets and dazzling special effects, does not at first glance seem like an overtly political work of art. But in the fictional, fantastical worlds of Marvel and DC Comics, and of The Fantastic Four: First Steps, the art-as-realpolitik is sometimes more about what is not said. It should come as no surprise that The Fantastic Four: First Steps lands, 'Barbenheimer'-style, with an intentionally aspirational Superman as its cinematic stablemate. When the world's stage feels dark, art often serves up a subconscious antidote. 'I feel raised by commercial entertainment and Hollywood stories, for better or worse,' Pedro Pascal, Hollywood's 50-year-old Chilean-born man of the moment, says. 'And what I love is that [ The Fantastic Four and Superman ] work and provide a kind of adventure-in-storytelling that was able to imprint itself into my childhood experience growing up.' Such stories, Pascal says, 'teach me that caring about people and wanting to save humanity and to have the opposite of moral injury-through-leadership, but inspiration and love for humankind in a non-hero-worship way, in positive messaging that reminds you of stories about caring for one another.' In The Fantastic Four: First Steps, Pascal – who has become Hollywood's most in-demand actor off the back of stunning performances in everything from The Mandalorian to The Last of Us – is joined by Vanessa Kirby (The Crown), Ebon Moss-Bachrach (The Bear, Andor) and Joseph Quinn (Stranger Things, Gladiator II) in the third big-screen outing of one of Marvel's most valuable comic book assets. With the planet in peril, who better to call on than Mister Fantastic (Pascal), Invisible Woman (Kirby), the Thing (Moss-Bachrach) and the Human Torch (Quinn)? Created by one of Marvel's most significant partnerships – writer Stan Lee and artist Jack Kirby – The Fantastic Four is unusual in comic book history. Its heroes are not broken, or haunted by dual identities, common tropes in the genre. In the comic book canon, they are celebrities, known by both their real names, Reed, Sue, Ben and Johnny, and their superhero monikers. Much in the same way the comic book did in the '60s, the new film reboot promises something quite remarkably unlike everything you've seen before. That's clear in the storytelling. It's also clear in the audience's reaction to both the film's trailer and the world promotional tour the cast has been on for the last month, including Sydney this week. Pascal's X-factor melted the thermometer long ago. But the ensemble – Kirby, Moss-Bachrach and Quinn – is also electric. They are greeted by thousands of fans at every stop, and the collective conversation has been a revelation, says Kirby. 'I think we felt it from the start. I've never experienced the level of care and love that's [coming at us]. People that are really excited about seeing the movie, but also have a deep history with these characters, you know.' While the film is plainly a big-ticket, blue-chip action blockbuster, with a budget that is probably in the $US200 million-plus range, it is also a quite nuanced character film which dives deeply into the emotional world of its protagonists. What sets The Fantastic Four: First Steps apart, says Kirby, is its humanity. 'The film actually looks at what it's like to feel all the conflicting things that we feel as humans,' she says. 'We have good days. We have bad days. Sometimes we feel like we have a superpower. Sometimes we feel like we're the very opposite. And we have both light and dark within us, and there's something amazing about playing real family dynamics and not feeling like you're a superhero. 'We've found it really interesting to look and think about otherness and how they feel other, because of the change in identity and how we all struggle with that. I struggle with that all the time. And as you move through your life and you feel like 'this is a version of me', and then it changes and you look back. There's something about coming to terms with difference in yourself and confronting that, that I think the film is really asking us to look at.' Pascal says the film carves out'a singular identity while still honouring and staying connected to the world that we all know'. 'We met Iron Man in such a unique way and the Guardians of the Galaxy and even in the middle of an arc of a familiar character we shake it up with some new style, and this is just really coming in with its own identity and I love that.' To that end, the actors were given more latitude than they had anticipated, particularly for a film in the superhero genre, and with a story structure where so much of the narrative would be dictated by the needs of the film's special effects. 'More room than I was expected to ever have to fill, actually,' says Pascal. 'They've been incredibly collaborative and we had a beautiful sort of theatre-like rehearsal process before we started shooting the movie, sitting around the table and working with the script and the writer and getting on our feet.' Dial the clock back almost a year, and we are standing inside a sound stage at London's Pinewood Studios. This is the spiritual home (and filming location) of some of the most famous films of all time: various James Bonds, Star Wars, the Christopher Reeve Superman, Aliens and, if you're old enough to remember, Britain's Carry On films. To say the grounds and stages are filled with artistic ghosts would be an understatement. It is here that director Matt Shakman – with production designer Kasra Farahani, set decorator Jille Azis and prop master Ty Teiger – created the alt-1960s world of the film. The intersection of architecture and mid-century style is critical, says Pascal. Loading 'That informs the character-building in a big way,' Pascal says. 'There's a lot of style that shapes the way things are played, and it's a … kind of delicate balance of a world that is very nostalgic, a world that's very grounded, something that is very much Reed, Sue, Johnny, Ben, and something that is very Pedro, Vanessa, Ebon, and Joe. It all kind of is a soup of these things, the '60s being the ultimate flavour, I think, even in the playing of it.' At one point, Shakman was considering letting the actors speak in the mid-Atlantic accent of 1960s-era television shows. 'They had to pull me all the way back because I was ready to talk that way the whole time and I loved it, and I mean, I loved it,' Pascal says. Helpful too is the extent to which the world has been realised physically. Which is not to say that The Fantastic Four: First Steps is not an effects-rich film. But a substantial part of the sets and locations have been created physically. 'We were on the set of our world's Times Square. It's one of the most impressive sets I've ever been on, and I've been on some really impressive sets,' says Pascal. 'It just does all the work. Your imagination is activated in the way it was when we were children. That is harder and harder to do as you get older, or within the labour of making a movie. When you are able to actually believe the world in a physical, practical way it is everything.' For Shakman, the project was a labour of love. 'I've loved The Fantastic Four since I was a kid, so this is a dream job and a chance to bring these characters to life … is incredibly exciting. I'm honoured. 'They're each individually wonderful characters, but then together as a group, they're very special. And they are Marvel's first family, which really sets them apart from found families like the X-Men or the Avengers. We have all the good and the bad of a family, all the messiness and the love that comes from that, and that's what makes them very special.' Perhaps the hardest balance to strike was between the humanistic elements of the characters and their superhuman capabilities. There is a general trend in the superhero genre towards slightly more authentic character notes; that feels particularly strong in Fantastic Four, which has a tone and style quite distinct from its Marvel stablemates. 'When you are trying to bring these larger-than-life characters who have such special power sets into the real world, you have to figure out how to ground them,' Shakman says. 'You want them to still be magical, but you need to understand how they work physically, so you need science. 'You need to figure out what does it mean in terms of the anatomy and the musculature for Reed to stretch? What does it mean [for Sue] to turn invisible? We did all sorts of research about things that have that in nature, camouflage. And then what does it mean to be a giant rock man? What does his anatomy look like? How would he move? And certainly the human torch, what does it mean? We looked at all sorts of fire elements and playing around with ways to make that feel as real as possible.' In the greatest cinematic tradition, the film is essentially hand-drawn first. Almost all motion pictures use such 'storyboards', but they seem like a uniquely resonant tool for a comic book-to-movie adaptation. 'We storyboard things, we make beautiful, amazing preview animations, and eventually the special effects department does incredible work,' Shakman says. 'But if you don't base it on a real body, a real human body in motion at some point in the process, it won't feel real. So we need to film actors doing it.' In one sense, a movie is a movie: an illusion carefully crafted out of set pieces, camera angles and a lot of plywood. At the same time, the Fantastic Four universe, like Star Trek and Star Wars, involves very specific props that, in part because of the intangible power given to them by fans, are almost talismanic in nature. 'To bring a Fantastic car to life, or a H.E.R.B.I.E. robot, or these space suits, all of that is a big task,' says Shakman. 'It's a fun task, it's one of the best parts of the job, but also because our movie is a period film set in the mid-'60s, so much of that world informs our design aesthetic. Loading 'We aren't just bringing a Fantastic car to life that is a kind of Platonic ideal of a Fantastic car, the [kind of] specific car that could have been built in this era by the Reed Richards of this era,' Shakman adds. 'So it is equal parts retro-future and Detroit motor excellence coming together, and that's been true for all of our props and all of our sets. We're trying to find something that feels very grounded in this period, but also is informed by retro-future ideas of the time as well.' The Fantastic Four: First Steps comes at a curious juncture in the history of comic book cinema. Several Marvel films have misfired, while a rebooted Superman, off the back of a critically conflicted iteration of DC Comics, has parlayed an optimistic tone into box-office success. With their combination of kindness, brilliance, empathy and strength, this rebooted foursome might be just what the world needs now.
Sydney Morning Herald
16-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Sydney Morning Herald
An antidote for dark times: The quiet politics of the new Fantastic Four
A superhero film, with lavish sets and dazzling special effects, does not at first glance seem like an overtly political work of art. But in the fictional, fantastical worlds of Marvel and DC Comics, and of The Fantastic Four: First Steps, the art-as-realpolitik is sometimes more about what is not said. It should come as no surprise that The Fantastic Four: First Steps lands, 'Barbenheimer'-style, with an intentionally aspirational Superman as its cinematic stablemate. When the world's stage feels dark, art often serves up a subconscious antidote. 'I feel raised by commercial entertainment and Hollywood stories, for better or worse,' Pedro Pascal, Hollywood's 50-year-old Chilean-born man of the moment, says. 'And what I love is that [ The Fantastic Four and Superman ] work and provide a kind of adventure-in-storytelling that was able to imprint itself into my childhood experience growing up.' Such stories, Pascal says, 'teach me that caring about people and wanting to save humanity and to have the opposite of moral injury-through-leadership, but inspiration and love for humankind in a non-hero-worship way, in positive messaging that reminds you of stories about caring for one another.' In The Fantastic Four: First Steps, Pascal – who has become Hollywood's most in-demand actor off the back of stunning performances in everything from The Mandalorian to The Last of Us – is joined by Vanessa Kirby (The Crown), Ebon Moss-Bachrach (The Bear, Andor) and Joseph Quinn (Stranger Things, Gladiator II) in the third big-screen outing of one of Marvel's most valuable comic book assets. With the planet in peril, who better to call on than Mister Fantastic (Pascal), Invisible Woman (Kirby), the Thing (Moss-Bachrach) and the Human Torch (Quinn)? Created by one of Marvel's most significant partnerships – writer Stan Lee and artist Jack Kirby – The Fantastic Four is unusual in comic book history. Its heroes are not broken, or haunted by dual identities, common tropes in the genre. In the comic book canon, they are celebrities, known by both their real names, Reed, Sue, Ben and Johnny, and their superhero monikers. Much in the same way the comic book did in the '60s, the new film reboot promises something quite remarkably unlike everything you've seen before. That's clear in the storytelling. It's also clear in the audience's reaction to both the film's trailer and the world promotional tour the cast has been on for the last month, including Sydney this week. Pascal's X-factor melted the thermometer long ago. But the ensemble – Kirby, Moss-Bachrach and Quinn – is also electric. They are greeted by thousands of fans at every stop, and the collective conversation has been a revelation, says Kirby. 'I think we felt it from the start. I've never experienced the level of care and love that's [coming at us]. People that are really excited about seeing the movie, but also have a deep history with these characters, you know.' While the film is plainly a big-ticket, blue-chip action blockbuster, with a budget that is probably in the $US200 million-plus range, it is also a quite nuanced character film which dives deeply into the emotional world of its protagonists. What sets The Fantastic Four: First Steps apart, says Kirby, is its humanity. 'The film actually looks at what it's like to feel all the conflicting things that we feel as humans,' she says. 'We have good days. We have bad days. Sometimes we feel like we have a superpower. Sometimes we feel like we're the very opposite. And we have both light and dark within us, and there's something amazing about playing real family dynamics and not feeling like you're a superhero. 'We've found it really interesting to look and think about otherness and how they feel other, because of the change in identity and how we all struggle with that. I struggle with that all the time. And as you move through your life and you feel like 'this is a version of me', and then it changes and you look back. There's something about coming to terms with difference in yourself and confronting that, that I think the film is really asking us to look at.' Pascal says the film carves out'a singular identity while still honouring and staying connected to the world that we all know'. 'We met Iron Man in such a unique way and the Guardians of the Galaxy and even in the middle of an arc of a familiar character we shake it up with some new style, and this is just really coming in with its own identity and I love that.' To that end, the actors were given more latitude than they had anticipated, particularly for a film in the superhero genre, and with a story structure where so much of the narrative would be dictated by the needs of the film's special effects. 'More room than I was expected to ever have to fill, actually,' says Pascal. 'They've been incredibly collaborative and we had a beautiful sort of theatre-like rehearsal process before we started shooting the movie, sitting around the table and working with the script and the writer and getting on our feet.' Dial the clock back almost a year, and we are standing inside a sound stage at London's Pinewood Studios. This is the spiritual home (and filming location) of some of the most famous films of all time: various James Bonds, Star Wars, the Christopher Reeve Superman, Aliens and, if you're old enough to remember, Britain's Carry On films. To say the grounds and stages are filled with artistic ghosts would be an understatement. It is here that director Matt Shakman – with production designer Kasra Farahani, set decorator Jille Azis and prop master Ty Teiger – created the alt-1960s world of the film. The intersection of architecture and mid-century style is critical, says Pascal. Loading 'That informs the character-building in a big way,' Pascal says. 'There's a lot of style that shapes the way things are played, and it's a … kind of delicate balance of a world that is very nostalgic, a world that's very grounded, something that is very much Reed, Sue, Johnny, Ben, and something that is very Pedro, Vanessa, Ebon, and Joe. It all kind of is a soup of these things, the '60s being the ultimate flavour, I think, even in the playing of it.' At one point, Shakman was considering letting the actors speak in the mid-Atlantic accent of 1960s-era television shows. 'They had to pull me all the way back because I was ready to talk that way the whole time and I loved it, and I mean, I loved it,' Pascal says. Helpful too is the extent to which the world has been realised physically. Which is not to say that The Fantastic Four: First Steps is not an effects-rich film. But a substantial part of the sets and locations have been created physically. 'We were on the set of our world's Times Square. It's one of the most impressive sets I've ever been on, and I've been on some really impressive sets,' says Pascal. 'It just does all the work. Your imagination is activated in the way it was when we were children. That is harder and harder to do as you get older, or within the labour of making a movie. When you are able to actually believe the world in a physical, practical way it is everything.' For Shakman, the project was a labour of love. 'I've loved The Fantastic Four since I was a kid, so this is a dream job and a chance to bring these characters to life … is incredibly exciting. I'm honoured. 'They're each individually wonderful characters, but then together as a group, they're very special. And they are Marvel's first family, which really sets them apart from found families like the X-Men or the Avengers. We have all the good and the bad of a family, all the messiness and the love that comes from that, and that's what makes them very special.' Perhaps the hardest balance to strike was between the humanistic elements of the characters and their superhuman capabilities. There is a general trend in the superhero genre towards slightly more authentic character notes; that feels particularly strong in Fantastic Four, which has a tone and style quite distinct from its Marvel stablemates. 'When you are trying to bring these larger-than-life characters who have such special power sets into the real world, you have to figure out how to ground them,' Shakman says. 'You want them to still be magical, but you need to understand how they work physically, so you need science. 'You need to figure out what does it mean in terms of the anatomy and the musculature for Reed to stretch? What does it mean [for Sue] to turn invisible? We did all sorts of research about things that have that in nature, camouflage. And then what does it mean to be a giant rock man? What does his anatomy look like? How would he move? And certainly the human torch, what does it mean? We looked at all sorts of fire elements and playing around with ways to make that feel as real as possible.' In the greatest cinematic tradition, the film is essentially hand-drawn first. Almost all motion pictures use such 'storyboards', but they seem like a uniquely resonant tool for a comic book-to-movie adaptation. 'We storyboard things, we make beautiful, amazing preview animations, and eventually the special effects department does incredible work,' Shakman says. 'But if you don't base it on a real body, a real human body in motion at some point in the process, it won't feel real. So we need to film actors doing it.' In one sense, a movie is a movie: an illusion carefully crafted out of set pieces, camera angles and a lot of plywood. At the same time, the Fantastic Four universe, like Star Trek and Star Wars, involves very specific props that, in part because of the intangible power given to them by fans, are almost talismanic in nature. 'To bring a Fantastic car to life, or a H.E.R.B.I.E. robot, or these space suits, all of that is a big task,' says Shakman. 'It's a fun task, it's one of the best parts of the job, but also because our movie is a period film set in the mid-'60s, so much of that world informs our design aesthetic. Loading 'We aren't just bringing a Fantastic car to life that is a kind of Platonic ideal of a Fantastic car, the [kind of] specific car that could have been built in this era by the Reed Richards of this era,' Shakman adds. 'So it is equal parts retro-future and Detroit motor excellence coming together, and that's been true for all of our props and all of our sets. We're trying to find something that feels very grounded in this period, but also is informed by retro-future ideas of the time as well.' The Fantastic Four: First Steps comes at a curious juncture in the history of comic book cinema. Several Marvel films have misfired, while a rebooted Superman, off the back of a critically conflicted iteration of DC Comics, has parlayed an optimistic tone into box-office success. With their combination of kindness, brilliance, empathy and strength, this rebooted foursome might be just what the world needs now.
Sunday World
15-07-2025
- General
- Sunday World
‘Beloved' nurse killed in London airport explosion was on first day of new job
Maria Fernanda Rojaz Ortiz (31) was among the four people killed in the plane crash. Four people died in the plane crash at London Southend Airport on Sunday, the PA news agency understands (Joe Giddens/PA) A Chilean-born nurse has been named as among the four people who were killed in a plane crash at London Southend Airport. Maria Fernanda Rojaz Ortiz (31), a German citizen born in Chile, was reportedly on her first day as a flight nurse on board the small aircraft when it came down after take-off on Sunday afternoon. A Dutch pilot and co-pilot, along with one other person, were also on the Beech B200 Super King Air, operated by Zeusch Aviation, which specialises in medical evacuations. Maria Fernanda Rojaz Ortiz (31). News in 90 Seconds - Monday July 14th A friend of Ms Ortiz, called Anna Smith, told the BBC it had been her first day as a flight nurse, having previously worked as a nurse in the public sector. 'She was so excited for this new job,' she said. She added: "She had a giving heart and was humble, and chose a profession that reflected that. It is understood that the plane had dropped off a patient at Southend, and was due to return to its base in the Netherlands The Air Accidents Investigation Branch has started an investigation with inspectors with expertise in aircraft operations, human factors, engineering and recorded data already dispatched to the crash site. The airport remains closed.
Irish Independent
14-07-2025
- Irish Independent
London Southend Airport plane crash: ‘Beloved' flight nurse killed in explosion was on first day of new job
LATEST | A Chilean-born nurse has been named as among the four people who were killed in a plane crash at London Southend Airport. Maria Fernanda Rojaz Ortiz (31), a German citizen born in Chile, was reportedly on her first day as a flight nurse on board the small aircraft when it came down after take-off on Sunday afternoon.
