HBO’s “The Pacific” serves as a spiritual follow-up to the network’s acclaimed wartime saga, “Band of Brothers.” Crafted by the same creative minds like Steven Spielberg, Tom Hanks, and Gary Goetzman, “The Pacific” embraced a much grittier approach compared to its predecessor, offering a raw portrayal of the war’s terrors and the compelling stories of those who participated. It secured eight Emmy awards for its 10-episode stretch, marking it as one of the finest miniseries ever presented on television. Yet, despite the exceptional team behind it, the series’ true distinction came from its remarkable ensemble cast.

Composed mainly of character actors, up-and-coming stars, and relatively unfamiliar faces at the time, many of the cast members have since achieved greater recognition, while others have continued to grow their careers with other noteworthy projects. With “The Pacific” first airing over 15 years ago, we’re exploring most of the primary cast members, the roles they played within the show’s broader context, and their career trajectories since the series made a significant impact on HBO viewers.

Joseph Mazzello’s portrayal of Private Eugene Sledge stands out as the nearest thing to a central character in “The Pacific.” Throughout the series, Sledge evolves from an eager young enlistee venturing into war to a man driven by an intense fervor against the enemy. While Mazzello did not receive individual awards for his performance, there is no question that his contribution was integral to the series securing the Emmy for outstanding miniseries.

Immediately after his run on “The Pacific,” Mazzello landed a part as Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz in the 2010 Academy Award-winning drama “The Social Network,” which chronicled the rise of Mark Zuckerberg from college student to tech mogul. “The Pacific” writer, director, and producer Graham Yost later brought Mazzello aboard his FX crime drama “Justified” as Billy St. Cyr. Though Mazello hasn’t done much acting over the last decade, he did reunite with co-star Rami Malek in “Bohemian Rhapsody,” playing Queen bassist John Deacon. Most recently, Mazzello appeared in Season 4 of “American Crime Story” as Washington insider Paul Begala and in the 2023 rom-com “Unexpected.”

In “The Pacific,” we’re shown the exploits of several Marine regiments during the battle of Guadalcanal, for which then-Sergeant John Basilone received the Medal of Honor. Basilone is played by Jon Seda, who had already been in the acting business for nearly two decades before the HBO miniseries reached audiences. Since then, he’s had plenty of roles on television and beyond.

Seda dove into another top-notch drama in 2012 titled “Treme,” from “The Pacific” writer George Pelecanos and “The Wire” creator David Simon. There, he played Nelson Hidalgo, a New Orleans native struggling to pick up the pieces in the wake of the devastating Hurricane Katrina. Seda didn’t appear in a ton of movies and shows over the next decade, as his career was largely focused on one part: Antonio Dawson, a senior-level cop in the Chicago Police Department on “Chicago P.D.” The role began as a recurring part in “Chicago Fire” and even led him to star in the short-lived “Chicago Justice.” 

In 2019, Seda left the “One Chicago” franchise and took some time away from acting. When he returned in 2021, he led the sci-fi drama “La Brea,” where he plays a retired Navy SEAL in Los Angeles who falls into a mysterious sinkhole leading to a prehistoric world.

James Badge Dale plays Private Robert Leckie, a young man wounded in combat, in “The Pacific.” Struggling with trauma while in medical recovery, Leckie’s journey is one of the series’ most captivating stories, and it wouldn’t have been as good without Dale’s talented work.

Dale’s television career expanded following “The Pacific” with a leading role in the thriller “Rubicon,” playing Will Travers, an intelligence analyst on the precipice of uncovering a massive conspiracy. He appeared in some major blockbusters, too, with minor parts as military men in “Iron Man 3” and “World War Z.” Another military role saw Dale playing Army contractor Tyrone Woods in the Michael Bay-directed “13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi.” Dale also appeared alongside Denzel Washington in “Flight” and in the Joseph Kosinski firefighter drama “Only the Brave.”

Pivoting back to television, Dale held a regular supporting role in the Monica Raymund-led “Hightown.” Later, he was billed as one of the stars of the “Yellowstone” prequel “1923, though his character was killed off in the first episode of the Taylor Sheridan-penned Western.

Rami Malek portrays what is possibly “The Pacific’s” most memorable character, Merriell “Snafu” Shelton, a Marine who is so changed by the war that he sinks to the lowest levels of humanity. With an insidious, detached demeanor, Snafu represents the stark, horrific reality of combat, illustrating how war can exact a heavy price — including a man’s very soul. But what really makes the character so compelling is Malek’s haunting performance — and, astonishingly, it might not even be the actor’s best work.

While standout roles didn’t immediately follow Malek’s appearance in “The Pacific,” he’d begin his march to stardom with a supporting role as the tech wizard Finn in the 2014 popcorn flick “Need for Speed.” Just one year later he’d begin playing data puncher-turned-cyber-revolutionary Elliot Alderson on the high-tech sci-fi thriller “Mr. Robot,” for which he’d win his first major award: an Emmy for outstanding lead actor in a drama. 

Amidst the peak of “Mr. Robot,” he won another award for starring in “Bohemian Rhapsody.” In the 2018 musical biopic, Ramek played rock icon Freddie Mercury — and even sang for some of his performance — earning an Oscar in the process. In 2023, he once again starred in a wartime drama as a member of the star-studded cast of “Oppenheimer,” where he portrayed nuclear scientist David L. Hill.

Played by Ashton Holmes in “The Pacific,” Private Sidney Philips grew up with Eugene Sledge in their hometown of Mobile, Alabama. Philips is the first to enlist and see action overseas, but they’re reunited soon enough, briefly crossing paths before Philips is rotated home just as Sledge is heading overseas for his first taste of combat.

Despite playing a main role amidst the multiple unfolding stories in “The Pacific,” Ashton Holmes never became the big star that some of his co-stars did. But while he never followed “The Pacific” with any high-profile projects, you may have seen his brief runs on shows in the early 2010s like The CW’s “Nikita,” where he played a clandestine operative named Thom, or as Tyler Barrol on the drama “Revenge.” He also had a recurring role on the award-winning “Being Mary Jane” as Garrett, the boss of a fictional morning news program. And, shortly before his single-episode appearance in “NCIS: Hawaii” in 2021,” he had a recurring role in Season 6 of “Bosch.”

Josh Helman brings the story of real-life serviceman Private Lew Juergens to the screen in “The Pacific.” Juergens enters the war effort alongside Robert Leckie and endures a trial by fire at Guadalcanal. Though he’s one of the more memorable characters on the series due to the number of characters and storylines Juergens is involved with, Helman landed even higher-profile work after his time on the show.

Enjoying something of a kickstart to his acting career thanks to “The Pacific,” Helman landed a minor role as Jeb Oliver in the 2012 blockbuster “Jack Reacher” alongside star Tom Cruise. Two years later, the Aussie actor snagged a bigger role as a young William Stryker in “X-Men: Days of Future Past,” succeeding Brian Cox in the role for the “X-Men” prequel. A few years later, and under heavy makeup, Helman also starred as one of the warboys, Slit, in the adrenaline-fueled “Mad Max: Fury Road.” Strangely enough, he returned in the 2024 prequel, “Furiosa: A Mad Max Story,” but as a totally different warboy named Scabrous Scrotus.

Irish actor Martin McCann portrayed Romus Burgin, a mortarman who winds up serving shoulder to shoulder with Eugene Sledge in the tense fighting on the islands of Peleliu and Okinawa. He was one of a select few characters to be seen on screen practically to the finale, accompanying Sledge and Shelton on their final train stateside after the war’s end.

McCann has had a busy career since “The Pacific” wrapped, with most of his work coming from outside of the United States. He landed a regular role in another history-inspired series as Conor McCann in “Titanic: Blood and Steel,” which chronicled the journey of constructing the famous vessel. A few years later, he starred as the nameless survivalist in “The Survivalist,” a gritty tale set in a post-apocalyptic world that’s nearly impossible to live in, and “Calibre,” where he reunited with British actor Jack Lowden a few years after their work together on the film “’71.” One of McCann’s most recent roles was also one of his most memorable, playing the distant officer Stevie Neil in the Irish cop drama “Blue Lights.”

Sergeant Manuel Rodriguez is unique in that he’s an original character created for the series. And though he was limited to just a pair of episodes on “The Pacific,” being killed off during the battle of Guadalcanal, the actor playing him, Jon Bernthal, has had one of the most distinguished careers since, meaning you’ve certainly seen him around.

It’s a fair bet that most of his fans best know Bernthal not from “The Pacific,” but instead from a role that came soon after. Appearing for two seasons and later in flashbacks on AMC’s “The Walking Dead,” Bernthal played former cop-turned-survivor-turned-zombie Shane Walsh. Suddenly a star, Bernthal next joined David Ayer’s “Fury” alongside Brad Pitt, where he returned to the theater of WWII. From there, he took on roles in modern movie classics from some of the biggest directors around, whether it was “The Wolf of Wall Street” with Martin Scorsese, “Baby Driver” with Edgar Wright, or “Sicario” with Denis Villeneuve.

Just because he was making it big in movies didn’t mean Bernthal had left television behind, though. In 2016 he grabbed the coveted role of Frank Castle, aka Marvel’s gun-toting vigilante, The Punisher, in Netflix’s “Daredevil,” a role he’s currently reprising in “Daredevil: Born Again.” He also starred in “The Sopranos” sequel “The Many Saints of Newark” in 2024 and returned to the silver screen in 2025 to star in “The Accountant 2” alongside Ben Affleck.

Like Jon Bernthal’s Manuel Rodriguez, Toby Leonard Moore didn’t portray a real-life Marine in “The Pacific,” though his character, Second Lieutenant Stone, still plays a crucial part in the story as one of the commanding officers serving above Leckie, Conley, Juergens, and Smith. While he had already been acting for a few years before “The Pacific,” the series marked the first high-profile project for Moore. He would go on to secure a role in “John Wick” a few years later as one of the Russian mobsters who sets Wick’s entire bloody quest for revenge in motion before meeting a grisly end.

But that critically acclaimed and culturally defining action flick isn’t the only project Moore tackled after “The Pacific.” On the television side of things, Moore is well-remembered for his role in the first season of Marvel’s “Daredevil” (though not alongside Bernthal), where he played the unassuming yet top-level criminal James Wesley, right-hand man to Vincent D’Onofrio’s villainous Wilson Fisk. Around the same time, he began starring in the corporate thriller “Billions,” a series led by “Band of Brothers” alum Damian Lewis, which came to a close in 2023.

Though Annie Parisse’s time on “The Pacific” was limited to just two episodes, her character had one of the most memorable arcs in the series. Parisse plays Sergeant Lena Riggi, who meets Sgt. Basilone while the two are serving stateside. The pair quickly fall in love and get married, but Riggi tragically becomes a widow before the war’s conclusion; Basiole was killed in action not long after returning to the frontlines, dying during one of the bloodiest battles in the Pacific on the shores of Iwo Jima.

Though some of Parisse’s high-profile roles came before her time in “The Pacific,” she went on to make recurring appearances in programs like “The Following” as FBI Agent and cult expert Debra Parker and again portrayed a federal agent, Kara Stanton, in the J.J. Abrams-led drama “Person of Interest.” She also moved on to lighter fare with the Netflix comedy “Friends from College,” a series where she snagged a leading role as Samantha Delmonico, a woman trying to navigate the difficult challenge of living in New York City.

Serving in the Corps during the battles of Guadalcanal, Cape Gloucester, and eventually Peleliu, Corporal Wilbur Conley was one of several members of H Company to be wounded at that final site, effectively disappearing from the series afterward. “The Pacific” remains a career highlight, as Nobbs isn’t the most prolific actor on this list. In fact, since the HBO miniseries aired in 2010, he’s added barely a baker’s dozen listings to his filmography.

Perhaps his most noteworthy role since the Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg-produced miniseries was as the crooked Pat Duffy on “Public Morals,” a period piece drama that saw the actor trade the war-torn Pacific Theater for a police procedural set in the Big Apple during the ’60s. Beyond that, Nobbs has shown up on shows like “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit,” “Person of Interest,” and, most recently, the 2022 series “The Endgame” starring Morena Baccarin. Nobbs has also done work on the stage, playing Billy Martin in “Bronx Bombers” in 2014, among other productions.

Introduced at the start of the series and appearing up until the halfway point, Jacob Pitts portrayed Bill “Hoosier” Smith in “The Pacific,” seeing action in the battle of Guadalcanal and beyond. Though his time on the WWII epic was somewhat limited in scope when compared to the show’s standout stars, 2010 marked a turning point in his career, and not just because of his appearance in the HBO miniseries.

One-off appearances on various TV shows have been the most common roles for Pitts since “The Pacific,” with one of the most noteworthy being the Emmy-award-winning legal drama “The Good Wife.” But before that, around the same time as his debut on the gritty wartime HBO classic, he took up a rifle on FX’s “Justified,” where he starred alongside Timothy Olyphant as Tim Gutterson, a critical member of the US Marshal’s Lexington branch alongside Raylan Givens (Olyphant).

In 2017 he held a recurring role as J.D. in the Bill Pullman drama “The Sinner” before appearing semi-regularly on Amazon’s Prime Video’s “Sneaky Pete,” where he played the morally ambiguous Lance Lord. His most recent TV appearance came in an episode of the Nathan Fillion cop dramedy “The Rookie.”

Movie buffs know William Sadler from “The Shawshank Redemption,” comedy fans know him as the Grim Reaper in “Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey,” and Trekkies remember him as the head of Section 31 from “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.” But to fans of “The Pacific,” he’ll always be the legendary Chesty Puller. Beginning his career in the interwar period and retiring after the end of the Korean War, the real Lewis Burwell “Chesty” Puller received numerous decorations, including five Navy Crosses, and Sadler perfectly embodied the toughness and bluster of the esteemed wartime leader for the HBO drama.

A prolific character actor, Sadler has continued to work after appearing as Puller in “The Pacific.” Since 2010, he’s appeared in dozens of TV shows and films, so odds are good that you’ve seen a few of them. Some of his most notable appearances include playing the President of the United States in “Iron Man 3” and in several episodes of “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” He also had a recurring role in the 2017 drama “Power” as Tony Teresi along with some memorable but brief appearances in hits like “The Rookie,” “Madam Secretary,” “The Blacklist,” and “Blue Bloods.” He even jumped to the DC Universe to play the villainous Simon Stagg in an episode of “The Flash.” In 2020, Sadler returned to play the Grim Reaper once more in “Bill & Ted Face the Music,” though he was nowhere to be seen in the “Section 31” movie.

Surviving a brush with death twice, Brendan Fletcher’s Private Bill Leyden appeared in the second half of the HBO series, fighting alongside Joseph Mazzello and Rami Malek’s characters in the battles of Peleliu and beyond. But it isn’t just in “The Pacific” that you’ve seen Fletcher, who’s enjoyed a decades-long career — before and since — with plenty of moments you might recognize him from.

At the time of “The Pacific,” Fletcher had starred in the film “Rampage,” a franchise he returned to for two sequels. He’d counter that less prestigious work with a spot in the Oscar-winning “Revenant.” He also played not one, but two different characters in small-screen superhero shows from DC, with roles in “Superman & Lois” and “Arrow,” while also showing up in hits like “Hell on Wheels” and “Fargo.” More recently, Fletcher held a regular role on the Paramount+ series “Joe Pickett” as well as an episode of another HBO series, “The Last of Us.” He was the gun-toting, yuletide merc Krampus in “Violent Night” and played the infamous gunslinger George Coe in “Billy the Kid.” His most recent role came in 2025 when he played Harley in the Amazon original, “Reacher.”