Actor calls on filmmakers to \u2018keep telling the stories, keep expressing yourself and keep fighting to be who you are\u2019.<\/p>\n
Chilean-American actor Pedro Pascal has called on members of the film industry to \u201cfight back\u201d and keep expressing themselves amid what he appeared to describe as a political climate of fear in the United States.<\/p>\n
\u201cF*** the people that try to make you scared. And fight back. This is the perfect way to do so in telling stories. Don\u2019t let them win,\u201d said 50-year-old Pascal, who was at the Cannes film festival for the premiere of \u201cEddington\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cFear is the way that they win, for one. And so keep telling the stories and keep expressing yourself and keep fighting to be who you are,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cEddington\u201d stars Pascal as a small-town mayor campaigning against a down-on-his-luck sheriff played by Joaquin Phoenix in a New Mexico town where tensions are simmering over COVID-19 mask policies and the Black Lives Matter protests.<\/p>\n
Pascal, known for his role in dystopian video-game adaptation \u201cThe Last of Us\u201d, added that it was \u201cfar too intimidating\u201d for him to address a question about US President Donald Trump\u2019s immigration policy.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s very scary for an actor participating in a movie to sort of speak to issues like this,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m an immigrant. My parents are refugees from Chile. We fled a dictatorship, and I was privileged enough to grow up in the US after asylum in Denmark \u2026 I stand by those protections,\u201d the 50-year-old told a news conference in Cannes.<\/p>\n
Trump has launched a crackdown on irregular immigration and has also detained and moved to deport a number of legal permanent US residents<\/a>, his policies triggering a rash of lawsuits and protests.<\/p>\n