It's safe to say that Tyrion Lannister from Game of Thrones shot Peter Dinklage's star to the sky and beyond. And it gave him a whopping amount of money too.
But before he starred on the hit HBO show, he already had a pretty successful career. He starred in productions on stage during his rise to fame, became the frontman for a punk band called Whizzy, appeared in some minor films and television shows, and once sported a really great mullet.
Later on, he made mainly indie films and more mainstream films like Elf and The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, until GOT started casting in 2010. We can't even imagine him in any other role, but he has gone on to star in other things, since leaving, including Netflix's I Care A Lot and many more great films and shows. Now he has a $25 million net worth, but how was it looking before GOT?
He Struggled In His Early Career
After studying at Bennington, Dinklage moved to New York City in 1991 with a friend. His first plans were to build a theater company modeled after Steppenwolf in Chicago, but when those plans fell through, he started getting some stage work and roles in low-budget films.
Although it says unconfirmed and uncredited on his IMDb page, his very first credit was Woody Allen's Shadows and Fog. He played a circus performer, not the type of role he was interested in taking. He refused to take elves, leprechauns, or any other characters of the like, ever again.
He didn't have an agent when he had his memorable appearance in Steve Buscemi's 1995 indie comedy, Living in Oblivion, where he played an actor who was annoyed by getting cast in a dwarf role.
"Word got out," Dinklage told the New York Times. "I started to build up a resentment. And that fueled my desire to live in a cold apartment and be like: 'I don’t need you! I’m gonna write poetry. Why would I want to be a member of your club if you don’t want me?'"
Dinklage made a couple more low-budget films like Safe Men, and more ironically, Pigeonholed until Buscemi came in clutch around the late '90s. He recommended Dinklage to Alexandre Rockwell, who was making a film called 13 Moons.
Dinklage and Rockwell clicked right away, and they started a successful creative collaboration. "Peter comes shining through as a personality beyond any kind of diminutive-size issue," Rockwell said.
Into the 2000s, Dinklage was earning a better living, but he still wasn't getting the roles he wanted. He really wanted to play "the romantic lead" who "gets the girl" at the end.
When the actor met Tom McCarthy, they became friends instantly too. McCarthy knew instantly that Dinklage was "leading-man material."
"It was crystal clear," McCarthy said. "There are qualities that leading men possess, this kind of self-assuredness and this vulnerability. Pete had both." They later worked on The Station Agent, which became Dinklage's breakthrough film. It was a heartwarming film that won the Audience Award at Sundance, and the role showed Dinklage's skill in his first leading role.
"I’d been in great films before, but I’d never been involved in something from the early stages," Dinklage said. "It’s the way I wanted to work. Like Steppenwolf — loyal to the ensemble."
The same year, Dinklage played Miles Finch in Elf, somewhat going backward, playing a dwarf that gets angry when Buddy calls him an Elf. After that, there was another stale period in his career.
He appeared in 2005's The Baxter, Escape Artists, and a 13-episode arc on Threshold. In 2006, he appeared in the film Penelope, 7 episodes of Nip/Tuck, and a year later made his first appearance in the film Death at a Funeral (filmmakers loved him so much in the first that they asked him to reprise his character in the remake in 2010). Then came The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian in 2008, then appearances in I Love You Too, The Last Rites of Ransom Pride, and Pete Smalls Is Dead.
In 2011, Dinklage's life was changed forever when he was cast as Tyrion Lannister in GOT.
