Dinklage’s fatal connection

Peter Dinklage has always attracted attention, said Mike Sager in Esquire. Growing up with dwarfism, he became accustomed to people stopping and gawking at him in the street. Celebrity has intensified the effect, except strangers now point and wave at the 4-foot-5-inch actor, whom they recognize from his many film and TV roles. “Sometimes,” says Dinklage, 44, “the encounters can be meaningful.” He remembers one morning, not long after his breakout role in the 2003 movie The Station Agent, when he was walking down a Los Angeles street. “There was a guy on a motorcycle in front of me—maybe six feet [away]. He didn’t wave, but he looked at me, then pulled out into traffic, and this car, like, boom, killed him instantly. I was the last person he saw on earth. And I connected with him. There was this moment where it was like I was the only person in the world who knew this guy was dead. He’d probably just had breakfast at the same place I was headed. Then he died.” Do you think you might have distracted him? “No, no, no, no!” he shouts. “Oh, my God! I never thought of that before. This was supposed to be a story about how I actually connected with a stranger. Oh, f---. I’m gonna have nightmares tonight.”

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