Peter Dinklage: "I'm Not A Sex Symbol'
Peter Dinklage may not be a typical Hollywood star. But he certainly faces the thrills and challenges of being a huge celebrity – as evidenced by his being mobbed by admirers.
"Game of Thrones fans are the nicest people ever, but a thousand nice people coming at me gives me claustrophobia," the actor, who plays Tyrion Lannister on HBO's hit fantasy series, tells Playboy in a new interview.
"I can't wear a pair of sunglasses and pull my hat down and just disappear. I'm 4½ feet tall, so I sort of stand out."
Lately, Dinklage, 43, is standing out as a sex symbol, a status he says he takes "with a grain of salt."
"'DwILF,' as in 'Dwarf I'd Like to F--k'? That's very clever," Dinklage said, responding to a question from Playboy about his current sex-symbol status, thanks in no small part to his scene-stealing role as Tyrion Lannister on GoT.
"Honestly, I think there's an irony in all of this," the Golden Globe winner tells the men's magazine. "I take it with a grain of salt. They'll say, 'Oh, he's sexy,' but women still go for guys who are 6-foot-2. It's nice that people are thinking outside the box, but I don't believe any of it for a minute."
But that recognition may be marketable, after all – in the form of a fragrance, which Dinklage says he'll call Midgeté Midgeté. (Though Dinklage says the M word is "like the N world among short-statured people," "some of us have made it our own. We add an e with an accent at the end.")
"I have a friend – not a dwarf – who's an alchemist of sorts. He concocted a men's cologne ... He gave me a bottle as a gift. I was thinking, we should totally put this on the market. You know how Jessica Simpson and Beyoncé have signature perfumes and make a mint? I'm thinking this cologne could be my ticket to fortune."
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Another problem only the biggest Hollywood stars face? Recognising the VIPs when you're in their midst.
"I apparently brushed off Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie on my way to the stage," he says of winning a Golden Globe in 2012, when he spoke about an actor who was injured in a dwarf-tossing incident in his acceptance speech.
"When you're in that moment and you're about to accept an award and you have no idea what you're going to say, you don't notice that Brad and Angelina are reaching out to say hello," Dinklage says. "All I saw was a sea of people I needed to get through. Friends don't care about issues like dwarf tossing. They only care about 'Dude, you dissed Brangelina.' "
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