Hollywood star Peter Dinklage, who stands at four ft. five inches tall, shared that he has only done one audition in his life. Because of his height, he had a "very narrow window" for the parts he could go up for. The actor worked regular jobs while taking on the limited roles that fit him.
"I don't know how anyone survives (auditions). But I was fortunate enough and - it's not being egotistical - but I had a very narrow window early on in my career about parts I could play...it was a while ago and people didn't really think outside the box in terms of casting someone like me,” he said on a podcast.
“I didn't have any interest in going out for things like that. I just had regular jobs that paid the bills. I'd rather do that and feel happy with my choices of the day,” said the Game Of Thrones star.
He added, "And then I auditioned for my first film, Living in Oblivion, which was about the making of an independent movie. It has a bit of a cult following now and it was such a wonderful environment of independent filmmaking in New York. That was my first and only audition.But it didn't pave a golden path for me whatsoever, it was two weeks of work and then I went back to my day job."
Following his first audition, the award-winning star went on a rotation of working jobs simply to pay the bills until after a decade he vowed to give that up in search of a full-time career.
However, luck played its magic on him as director Alexandre Rockwell was in the audience of a play he was starring in and he immediately roped him for his next big project, reports an online portal.
He said, "Then it was like 10 more years of theatre, day jobs and independent films to pay the bills. It was a really narrow casting thing for me. There was just a few things...or, if a friend, a couple of friends of mine who are independent filmmakers, they would write a part of me because they thought I was funny. But then I did a play downtown on Chambers Street in an old bank, another $200-a-week job, and for some reason - I was closing in on 30, I was about 28 - I said, 'This is the last, I'm gonna become an actor now, I'm gonna have trust and faith in what I'm doing' and when I did that, a guy called Alexandre Rockwell saw the play.”
Dinklage added, "He was a friend of the writers, we did a movie called 13 Moons and then suddenly, I became a working actor. It wasn't easy street but I was able to pay the bills in expensive New York City."