Peter Hayden Dinklage (/ˈdɪŋklɪdʒ/; born June 11, 1969) is an American film, television and stage actor. He received international recognition for portraying Tyrion Lannister on the HBO television series Game of Thrones (2011–2019), for which he won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series a record of four times. He also received a Golden Globe Award in 2011 and a Screen Actors Guild Award in 2020 for the role.

Dinklage studied acting at Bennington College, performing in a number of amateur stage productions. He made his film debut in the black comedy Living in Oblivion (1995), and had his breakthrough with a starring role in the 2003 comedy-drama The Station Agent. His other films include Elf (2003), Lassie (2005), Find Me Guilty (2006), Penelope (2006), Underdog (2007), Death at a Funeral (2007), The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian (2008), Death at a Funeral (2010), X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014), Pixels (2015), and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017). In 2018, he appeared as Eitri in the Marvel film Avengers: Infinity War and Hervé Villechaize in the biopic film My Dinner with Hervé. He also provided voice-acting for the video game Destiny.

Dinklage has also performed in theater, with roles such as the title character in Richard III (2003) at the Public Theatre, Rakitin in A Month in the Country (2015) at Classic Stage Company, and Cyrano de Bergerac in Cyrano at the Daryl Roth Theatre in 2019.

Dinklage has a common form of dwarfism known as achondroplasia; he stands 4 ft 5 in (1.35 m) tall. He has used his celebrity status to raise social awareness concerning dwarfs.

Early life
Dinklage was born on June 11, 1969, either at the Jersey Shore region of New Jersey, or in Morristown, New Jersey, to John Carl Dinklage, an insurance salesman, and Diane Dinklage, an elementary-school music teacher. Of German and Irish descent, he grew up in the historic Brookside section of Mendham Township, with his parents and older brother, Jonathan. He is the only member of his family with achondroplasia.

As a child, Dinklage and his brother performed puppet musicals for people in their neighborhood. He has described his brother Jonathan as being the "real performer of the family," saying that his brother's passion for the violin was the only thing that kept him from pursuing acting. (Jonathan graduated from the Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University and is a violinist and concertmaster for the musical Hamilton.)

Dinklage had his first theatrical success in a fifth-grade production of The Velveteen Rabbit. Playing the lead, he was delighted by the audience's response to the show. He attended Delbarton School, a Catholic preparatory school for boys, where he developed his acting skills. In 1984, he was inspired by a production of the play True West, by American playwright Sam Shepard, to pursue an acting career.

He then attended Bennington College, where he studied for a drama degree and appeared in numerous productions before graduating in 1991. He moved to New York City with his friend Ian Bell to build a theater company. Failing to pay the rent, they moved out of their apartment. He lived in New York for 20 years in Williamsburg and the West Village. He then worked at a data-processing company for six years before pursuing a career as a full-time actor.