The five movies Peter Dinklage couldn’t live without
It is a crying shame that Peter Dinklage will forever be pigeonholed by his appearance.
The Game of Thrones star is one of the finest actors of his generation. There can be no doubt that, if he didn’t suffer from achondroplasia, he would be in all the biggest movies and would have won all the biggest awards. Sadly, the way that Hollywood, and the wider world for that matter, is set up does not favour those who don’t fulfil a certain image. Dinklage will likely never reach the heights that he is capable of, which is a mad thing to say, considering he’s already done so much with his career.
Though he might be best known for his work on the small screen, he is no stranger to movieland. His cinematic releases include the musical Cyrano, notable for being the box office-battering competition to Avengers: Infinity War, and a long-awaited remake of The Toxic Avenger. He also knows a thing or two about movies, as he explained during an interview with Rotten Tomatoes.
The well-known review site asked the former ‘Hand of the King’ for his five favourite movies of all time. He kicked things off with an absolute classic: Wim Wenders’ nomadic Paris, Texas. The story of a broken family’s journey through the American Southwest, the film is widely regarded as one of the greatest independent movies ever made. It was written by, in Dinklage’s words, “the late, great Sam Shepard”, a Pulitzer Prize winner who passed away in 2013.
“War and absurdity as it should be,” is how Dinklage describes his next pick, Stanley Kubrick’s Dr Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. This legendary satire of the Cold War regularly appears in lists of both the funniest and most harrowing films ever produced. Peter Sellers’ much-lauded triple performance is a highlight that has stood the test of time.
Dinklage kept the theme of great directors going by selecting Federico Fellini’s Nights of Cabiria. The notably ‘Felliniesque’ movie, which has a rare 100% score on Rotten Tomatoes, follows Giulietta Masina playing the titular character after a harrowing ordeal leaves her Cabiria on death’s door. The film explores both the highest and lowest inventions of humanity, as Cabiria experiences incredible kindness and hideous betrayal in equal measure. Dinklage calls it “my favourite film from the maestro”.
Considering he chose a movie where a woman almost drowns in the opening scene, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that both of Dinklage’s final two picks are comedies. As he puts it, the 1987 Bruce Robinson film Withnail and I is about “What it means to be an actor, amongst other things”.
It stars Richard E Grant and Paul McGann as two down-on-their-luck thespians who end up visiting a rich relative’s country cottage “by accident”. A series of strange, very loosely connected events follow, leaving the pair to reflect on how their lives have turned out. Finally, Dinklage opted for an absolute classic with Duck Soup. Released in 1933, this all-out slapstick affair is one of the many masterpieces acted in by the Marx brothers, who Dinklage says can “fix any grey mood”.
That’s quite the varied selection, one that would make for one hell of a marathon. Duck Soup is definitely the one to finish on, though, as it’s one hell of a palate cleanser.
The five movies Peter Dinklage needs to live on:
- Paris, Texas (Wim Wenders, 1984)
- Dr Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (Stanley Kubrick, 1964)
- Nights of Cabiria (Federico Fellini, 1957)
- Withnail and I (Bruce Robinson, 1987)
- Duck Soup (Leo McCarey, 1933)
