Why Peter Dinklage Almost Turned Down His Breakout Role On Game Of Thrones

Peter Dinklage has become one of the more recognizable actors working in Hollywood these days, and while he cut his teeth on largely independent movies, his breakout role was playing one of the best characters HBO has ever produced: Tyrion Lannister on "Game of Thrones." That role, however, was nearly played by somebody else because Dinklage, who is 4 feet, 5 inches tall, was worried about how a little person would be portrayed in a fantasy-fiction landscape.

Dinklage has made it no secret that he routinely refuses roles that use his size as the butt of jokes or as a plot device. So it's no surprise that for most of his career, he's stayed away from anything involving fairies, elves, dwarves, and so on. He was extra skeptical when "Game of Thrones" showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss pitched him their idea. "I had one hesitation, because of the fantasy genre," Dinklage wrote in a Reddit AMA. "I told [Benioff] I didn't want a really long beard and pointy shoes, and they assured me this character and this world wasn't that. They told me about his complexity ... and they painted a flawed and beautiful portrait of him, so I signed on."

The move ended up being the right one for Dinklage, who became one of the bigger stars on the show and walked away with a record-setting four Emmys and a Golden Globe for playing the oft-drunk but witty Tyrion.

While it might be easy for people to think that Peter Dinklage accepting the role of Tyrion on "Game of Thrones" was a no-brainer, it's never quite that easy for him. Accepting a role in a fantasy-driven show particularly worried him. "Dwarves in these genres always have this look," Dinklage told The New York Times. "My guard was up. Not even my guard — my metal fence, my barbed wire was up. Even 'Lord of the Rings' had dwarf-tossing jokes in it."

Even outside the world of fantasy, Dinklage has run into issues with casting. In the same 2012 interview, he said it's still hard to be taken seriously as a little person. "Dwarves are still the butt of jokes," he said. "It's one of the last bastions of acceptable prejudice. ... You can say no. You can [choose] not [to] be the object of ridicule."

Since "Game of Thrones," Dinklage has managed to keep to his principles and still score major roles. Recently, he's been seen in the "Dexter" reboot, and Dinklage was TVLine's Performer of the Week for his lone appearance on the Ethan Hawke crime comedy "The Lowdown."