Peter Dinklage

Dinklage was born on June 11, 1969, in the Jersey Shore region of 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. He was raised Catholic.

As a child, Dinklage and his brother performed puppet musicals for people in their neighborhood. He has described his brother Jonathan as "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-New Brunswick and served as 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 to pursue an acting career by a production of Sam Shepard's play True West.

He 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 had to move out of their apartment. He subsequently lived in New York for 20 years in Williamsburg and the West Village, then worked six years for a data-processing company before again pursuing a full-time acting career.