Sarah Paulson recalls giving Pedro Pascal some of her acting salary so he could 'feed himself'

Pedro Pascal may be one of Hollywood's biggest stars now, but at one time his friend Sarah Paulson helped him out when he was struggling to land acting work.

The "American Horror Story" star and longtime friend of Pascal reminisced about their relationship in an Esquire profile of him published Tuesday, revealing she gave Pascal some money she made from her acting jobs to help support him.

“He’s talked about this publicly,” Paulson said. “but 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.”

Paulson added that Pascal, 48, is the type of actor you can't help but root for: "You just want him to succeed," she said.

“And that, to me, is the sign of a major movie star. I’m ready for him to take the reins from the guys from romantic comedies (of the) past, like Bruce Willis and Mel Gibson and all these guys. He can be all that. Let’s remake 'Die Hard' with Pedro. Remake all the 'Lethal Weapon' movies with Pedro.”

After graduating from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts in 1997, Pascal landed roles in CBS' "The Mentalist," NBC's "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit" and several other TV shows before breaking out with lead roles in Disney+'s hit series "The Mandalorian" in 2019 and HBO's "The Last of Us" earlier this year.

Pascal has recalled several rejections throughout his career and worrying that acting professionally wasn't going to work out.

“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," he told Esquire. "There were so many good reasons to let that delusion go.”

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When Pascal moved to New York for college, he became close friends with Paulson, and the two bonded over their love of film.

"We would go to see movies all the time in those years,” Pauslon said. “And we would get so lost in them. You can fill in the blanks about the why of that however you like, but I think there were things we wanted to escape mentally, emotionally, spiritually.”

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Sarah Paulson gave money to Pedro Pascal so he could 'feed himself'