Joe Pascual

People often think Joe Pascual's name is Italian. It's actually Spanish, with a Filipino flip, but Pascual himself isn't bothered about it -- he's often taken for Cuban, Venezuelan, Malaysian, Portuguese or even Irish with a decent tan. Like Law & Order's Benjamin Bratt, he has a look that translates into dozens of situations, without his persona being pinned down. And he's got the acting chops to back up that versatility. Born in Manila to a Spanish father and a Filipino mother, he grew up hooked on the American TV beamed in because of local U.S. military bases. "I was the only kid in my neighborhood who didn't have an accent," he recalls."Or, I guess I should say, the only kid with an American accent. Anyway, I was totally hooked on Hollywood and all the movies and shows that came out of it." Joe and his kid sister, Joanne, used to act out the programs they had seen -- a skill that came in handy when their mom, Myrna Pascual, became a TV producer and sometimes needed kids on short notice. Joe was a featured dancer on a show appropriately called DynaKids, and by the time the was 10, was hosting a daytime variety show. The siblings later had their own sitcom, and also appeared in many commercials and live productions. Finding the Philippines scene too insular, Joe went to school in Switzerland while still in his teens, then took the leap to New York, and enrolled at the American Musical & Dramatic Academy. Graduating at the age of 19, he immediately landed the lead role in a touring version of The Barber of Seville (the comic play, not the opera), and then joined a tour of West Side Story. In this revival, initially mounted on Broadway, he had the key role of Chino. "We did two years of that in Europe," he recalls, "and it was a sensational experience. The director, Alan Johnson, was a student of Jerome Robbins -- and he performed in the original production -- so it was very much true to the vision of Robbins and Leonard Bernstein." At the end of that run, in 1995, the company wound up in Toronto, where Pascual played his dream role of Bernardo in West Side Story. But a casual trip to Vancouver, with its bustling television scene, inspired a move. "I just liked the place, with its fresh energy and laid-back climate." After a quick visit to the Philippines, in which he shot two low-budget films, he settled in B.C. and began going after TV work. He got it, and had what he calls "The Year of the Cop". Although only in his mid-20s (which is still true), Joe started landing work as tough cops, cagey FBI agents, cynical bureaucrats, and scary drug lords in shows like The Outer Limits, Stargate, The Sentinel, Strange World, The Net, and of course, The X-Files. "For some reason," observes the compact, distinctly rugged-looking performer, "I kept getting all these parts where the script actually asks for Big White Guys In Their 40s." A rather odd niche, that, but one Pascual expects to escape soon. More recently, he shot seven episodes of the UPN's Mercy Point -- a series he describes as "ER in space, but with a lot more sex" -- in which he played an "intergalactic paramedic". He also had a featured part in The Falling, an independent item shot in Vancouver, and worked in a couple of MOWs while playing a recurring role as Detective Quilio on the TV Series Nightman. On top of all this, he's taken time to perform in live musical programs, do multicultural radio work, and hold his own acting workshop, during Vancouver's first-ever Asian-American Film Festival, in 1997. He's also in the process of writing some future projects for himself. "I like the idea of giving ethnic actors more of a voice in the mainstream; I've got my foot in the door, and I feel like I'm part of a movement away from stereotyped ideas of who can play what. But personally, the biggest thrill is getting to work with some of the actors I grew up watching. It turns out that Manila isn't that far from Hollywood, after all."