Pedro Pascal has had one heck of a year. Between being a part of one of the biggest 2025 TV shows with The Last of Us Season 2 and having significant roles in two of the biggest releases on the 2025 movie schedule, he has become the internet’s shorthand for ubiquity. But while Pascal may be carrying some of Hollywood’s biggest projects on his shoulders, his fellow Fantastic Four cast member Paul Walter Hauser has quietly been building an equally busy résumé, just in a different way.
In a candid new profile with GQ, Hauser addressed the comparisons to Pascal’s non-stop schedule. What makes his recent career feel like an omnipresence without quite being a takeover? Well, it might have to do with the size of his roles. He explained to the outlet:
I think the difference is that he’s starring in everything, I’m just doing the John Goodman, John C. Reilly thing of popping in to help the team. I think Fantastic Four was five or six days of shooting total. Deliver Me From Nowhere might've been 12 days total. Naked Gun was more like 18 to 22 days, probably. Americana might’ve been, like, 16 days. So when you add them all up, it’s like four movies that technically took up 50 days of my life, out of 365 in a year.
It’s a telling breakdown of how Hauser has become one of the most ubiquitous actors in 2025 without actually monopolizing his time. While Pascal leads massive franchises, the Black Bird performer thrives as a supporting player, slipping into projects long enough to steal a scene or provide ballast for the bigger names. The result is a run that has him appearing in comedies, like the excellent Naked Gun reboot, to indies to superhero tentpoles, all within the same calendar year.
That versatility, however, comes with its own set of challenges. The Queenpins veteran added:
They’ve got like 400 people on set trying to make Fantastic Four. No one’s interested in you taking your time, trying to talk through a process. You’re one of 19 people who need to come in and do a third of a page today, [so you have to] keep it moving. It’s tricky, man—there’s a lot of pressure on bigger sets. I’ve always felt more pressure on something like Cruella or Fantastic Four than I would I, Tonya or Americana.
Hauser admitted there are both benefits and frustrations of being seen primarily as a “character actor.” The label, he says, motivates him to push beyond being cast as the oddball or comic relief. He continued:
I don’t take offense at it, but it does put a chip on my shoulder, to want to compete. I think most people want me to come in for 10 minutes and be the goofy guy, or the scary guy, in their movie, briefly. But I wanna be Jack O'Connell in Sinners. I wanna be Kyle Chandler in The Wolf of Wall Street. I wanna get up in the face of an A-lister and box with them, acting-wise. I wanna be in the mix. I don’t need to be the steak, but I also don’t wanna be the garnish.
Paul Walter Hauser as garnish? Now that’s an image.
It's clear Hauser is grateful for his place in Hollywood, knowing his ability to blend into so many projects—without being typecast into a single lane—has made him a reliable presence. From playing Mole Man in The Fantastic Four: First Steps to anchoring prestige dramas like Deliver Me From Nowhere, he’s carving out a career that balances visibility with range.
If you’ve noticed the Richard Jewell actor seemingly “everywhere,” that’s by design. But as Paul Walter Hauser points out, it’s not about dominating the scree, but about knowing when to drop in, do the work, and move on.
He can now be seen starring opposite Sydney Sweeney in the indie western crime thriller Americana, which is playing in theaters.
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