Sarah Paulson gave her per diem to Pedro Pascal while he was a struggling actor

Sarah Paulson has recalled the time when she financially helped out Pedro Pascal while he was struggling to land acting work.

In a new profile of The Last of Us Star published on Tuesday (11 April), the 48-year-old Bird Box actor reminisced about her and Pascal’s longtime friendship.

“He’s talked about this publicly,” she told Esquire. “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 said there was something about Pascal that makes you “want him to succeed”.

“And that, to me, is the sign of a major movie star,” she continued. “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.”

Speaking of their times together, Paulson revealed that she and Pascal would go to see movies together.

“And we would get so lost in them,” she said. “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.”

In recent years, Pascal has received wider recognition for acclaimed performances in Game of Thrones and The Last of Us.

In a four-star review of The Last of Us’ finale, Indy’s Nick Hilton wrote: “This is a vision of the future where life is both very cheap and very dear, where scores of nameless henchmen might meet their maker to save the life of one girl.

“It is symptomatic of a show that has been morally capricious, and leaves the inevitable second series finely poised.”