Dinklage happy he took chance on latest 'Narnia' film
Says at one time he would have turned down such a role
"I was very cautious to a fault," says Dinklage, the 4-foot-6 actor best known for "The Station Agent."
"I wanted to run a theater company. I wanted to be in Cassavetes movies. I had high expectations of what life would provide me artistically. ... I wasn't really interested in doing a movie like this because, I thought, somebody my size in a fantasy movie, I think it would be limiting or what have you."
He pauses. "The older I get, hopefully the more open-minded I am about things like that."
Consider Dinklage officially sold on big-budget fairy tales. At least this one, which opens today. He marveled at "Caspian" director Andrew Adamson's marshaling of forces to craft such a spectacle. He reveled in the thin line between where his three hours of daily makeup ended and his real face began. He got to talk shop with dwarf actor and original Ewok and "Harry Potter" veteran Warwick Davis, who plays the Black Dwarf Nikabrik in "Caspian."
Dinklage's Trumpkin juggles cynicism and courage in a Narnia on the verge of extinction at the hands of an evil king. Trumpkin befriends the returning Pevensie children in their quest to save the realm. They succeeded the first time in the "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe," which grossed $750 million.
Dinklage, 38, has signed for the third screen installment of C.S. Lewis' "Narnia" book series, having been told of an October start date. Until then, he plans to shoehorn in a few indies and play the title role in "Uncle Vanya" (directed by his wife, Erica Schmidt) in July at Bard Summerscape at Annandale-on-Hudson in New York.
So he gets his blockbuster work — and Chekhov, too.
Dinklage's goals in show business have changed, although he is not consciously changing them, he says.
"It's getting older and knowing your priorities. It's good to have goals, but if you set those goals too specifically, you're going to be disappointed. And you're not going to be open to other things, I think."
He has done nearly two dozen projects since "The Station Agent," including "Find Me Guilty," "Underdog," "Death at a Funeral" and a recurring role on the FX series "Nip/Tuck," but his breakthrough performance as an isolated train buff in "The Station Agent" (2003) is the one people keep mentioning, he says.
It marked the first time a dwarf assumed the lead in a dramatic film released by a studio.
"It's a very simple story told very beautifully," he says. "Everybody can relate to loneliness, at least I can, and everybody in that movie could."
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