Find Out All About Peter Dinklage’s Wife, Erica Schmidt, Who Also Wrote the Script for the Game of Thrones Star’s Next Movie, Cyrano!
Peter Dinklage is best known for his fan-favorite performance on Game of Thrones as witty, complex antihero Tyrion Lannister—a role that earned him four Emmys. But nowadays, he's making the move into leading-man territory with a new musical movie adaption of the romantic classic Cyrano—and the script just happens to have been written by his wife, playwright and theater director Erica Schmidt.
Although the very private Dinklage typically reveals little about his personal life and isn’t on social media, now that he and his wife have worked together on such a high-profile project, we’re getting more of a glimpse into this talented couple.
Our most pressing question: How did she get him to sing onscreen? Let’s find out more about Peter Dinklage and his wife Erica Schmidt’s real-life love story.
Is Peter Dinklage married?
Yes, Dinklage married Schmidt in 2005. After a decade of marriage, he gushed about his wife in a 2015 interview with The Guardian, saying that she is “brilliant. She loves theater. Unlike a lot of other people in our profession where film is the ultimate goal, theater is sacred to her. It’s not entertainment; it’s art.” It’s clear he has great admiration, love and respect for Schmidt. “She’s very inspiring,” he continued. “She’s definitely the artist of the family… I am just the TV actor who pays the bills.”
Although some people might think their height difference makes them an unlikely pairing, Schmidt doesn’t see it that way. “What’s frustrating about it is that Pete is an incredibly handsome, charming, funny guy, but when he does a magazine or something it’s like, ‘Isn’t it amazing he’s four foot five inches tall and he’s sexy?’ You know, that’s just who Pete is," she told Rolling Stone in 2012. "And the rest of the world has to catch up."
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Who is Peter Dinklage’s wife, Erica Schmidt?
Schmidt is an award-winning playwright and theater director whose credits include writing and directing the 2019 adaptation Mac Beth. Also in 2019, she wrote and directed a musical stage adaptation of the 1897 French play Cyrano de Bergerac, the same source material for Dinklage's new star vehicle.
In the play, Cyrano, who in the original has a massive nose, helps a conventionally attractive man woo Roxanne, a woman they’re both in love with, by writing love letters for him—just like today’s catfishing, Dinklage has said. Roxanne does fall in love—but is it with the handsome man’s looks, or with Cyrano's passionate words? “[Schmidt] was commissioned to write an adaptation of Cyrano, and she had the great idea of stripping it down to its bare essentials, replacing the long monologues about love with love songs,” Dinklage told The New York Times in December 2021. Dinklage went on to star in the play, which featured original songs by the band The National.
Did Erica Schmidt write her Cyrano adaptation for Peter Dinklage?
Dinklage says his wife might have “subconsciously” written her Cyrano part for him by eliminating Cyrano’s famously huge nose—although there’s no reference to Dinklage’s height in her play, either. “Erica removed [the nose] and I thought I had to play this part because now it’s about a guy who doesn’t know what to do in the face of love,” Dinklage said in his New York Times interview. “But I definitely think she wasn’t just replacing the nose with my size in terms of a physical difference of the character. She just wanted to unearth. It’s kind of what I do: Every time I approach a role, I’m not just approaching it as someone my size, I’m approaching it as a flesh-and-blood human being with many more complications to the character.”
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Schmidt was actually hesitant at first to have Dinklage take on the role. “Peter said, ‘Maybe I could read it?’ Now when your life partner is a massive celebrity who everyone knows, there is a way in which everything becomes all about him, so I have to be frank and say I was a little resistant,” she told Financial Times. “But by the time he’d read it, it was clear he was absolutely perfect for it. So much about Peter’s own character was so similar: the razor-sharp intellect, his wit, his sense of humor.”
Dinklage told CBS News that he “begged” his wife for the role—in part because he wanted to sing on stage! ”For an actor, you always wanna do something that—for me at least—that scares you…I just never had sung since I was a kid.”
How did Peter Dinklage meet Erica Schmidt?
The couple's first meeting was just as theatrical as any musical production. “It was about 18 years ago now,” he told The New York Times. “We were all at a friend’s house and someone said, ‘They’re walking the elephants through the Queens-Midtown Tunnel.’ The circus was in town and it was snowing, and they were walking the elephants through Manhattan, a long line of them. It was like something out of a beautiful, fantastical, end-of-the-world, crazy, romantic movie. See? I always think about movies. So that’s the night we met, the night the elephants walked through Manhattan.” What a great story!
Related: 10 Great Tyrion Lannister Quotes from Game of Thrones
Did Peter Dinklage make a movie with his wife?
Yes! After director Joe Wright (Atonement, Pride and Prejudice) saw Schmidt's play Cyrano, which starred his girlfriend, Haley Bennett, as Roxanne, he decided to make a movie out of it and asked Schmidt to write the screenplay. Dinklage was a natural choice to act in the film alongside Bennett, even if his short stature challenges the notion of what a Hollywood leading man should look like. “It’s so funny, just talking about this movie, I’m asked, ‘How does it feel to play a leading man?’” he told The New York Times. “That’s still part of the conversation because we’re still inundated by clichés. The domain of romantic leads has been beautiful white people for a hundred years now.”
Schmidt also says although the story of Cyrano is universal—we all think something about ourselves is “hideous”—Dinklage is perfect for the film for reasons other than his appearance. “The things that make Peter right for this role are his intelligence and his wit and facility with language. He has something in common with this character: ‘I don’t trust you’ll see me for who I am,’” she told IndieWire.
Dinklage is already gaining Oscar buzz for his performance. Cyrano opened in a few theaters in December so it could qualify for the Academy Awards; it goes into limited release January 28 and wide release in a yet-to-be-confirmed date in February.
Has Peter Dinklage worked with his wife before?
Yes! Dinklage had previously been directed by Schmidt in a 2015 stage adaptation of the Russian play A Month in the Country. Dinklage admitted to The New York Times that another reason Schmidt might have subliminally had him in mind for Cyrano is “because we had worked together before and we’re partners in life.”
Where do Peter Dinklage and Erica Schmidt live?
Despite their fame, the couple lives a fairly quiet life—sort of. “I live in New York and I have a little place in the woods where I tend my garden,” Dinklage told The Guardian. But Schmidt tells a slightly different story. “We lived in Chelsea [in Manhattan] for a while, and we had a dog, a very big dog that had to be walked a lot. And this was probably season three of Thrones,” she told CBS News. “And he started walking down the street, and all of these people came—I don't know where they were coming from, from the restaurants—and it was, like, 30 people, you know, 'Peter! Peter! Tyrion!' coming towards him.” Because of his short stature, she says, it’s hard for him to hide. “He can't put on his sunglasses and a hat and disappear,” she said.
Does Peter Dinklage have kids?
Dinklage and his wife have two children, a daughter born in 2011 and a second child in 2017—Schmidt was pregnant at the opening of her 2017 play All the Fine Boys. But, he told The Guardian, the internet has his daughter’s name wrong! “Let me tell you right now: her name is not Zelig,” he said. “But it’s hilarious that that’s a fact in Wikipedia.” Although it appears Wikipedia has since been updated, other sources continue to get it wrong. Does he mind? “I don’t care!” he said. He hasn’t revealed the actual names of either of his kids‚ or even whether his second child is a son or daughter.
What he does mind, though, is when people take pics of his children without asking. “People mean well, but when you’re walking down the street with your kid and people take your picture without asking…” he trailed off when talking to The New York Times.
Dinklage admits he is a protective dad in general. “I am so protective of everything that society has to offer, especially if I am in it. Maybe one day she’ll watch Thrones,” he told The Guardian about his daughter. He did reveal the first film she saw in the theater—although he says she only lasted half an hour. “It was Miyazaki’s [Japanese animated film] My Neighbor Totoro…I think she was a little too young,” he said. “I think Dada was projecting on to her because I love Miyazaki so much. I jumped the gun on that one.”
Who else has Peter Dinklage dated?
Although we don’t know exactly who else he dated in his younger years, or if any of his previous girlfriends were famous, Dinklage has revealed a bit about his past love life. “I think there’s a Wuthering Heights quality to all love when you’re younger, you know? Romeo and Juliet wasn’t written for 40-year-olds,” he told The New York Times. “I was guilty of always falling for someone where it wasn’t reciprocated, because keeping it at a distance is more romantic than bringing it up close. You fall for people you know aren’t going to return that, so it’s even more tormented, and you’re not interested in the people interested in you. That’s how my brain worked because I was a self-saboteur when I was young.”
Dinklage has been fortunate, though, to find true love with Schmidt. “If anybody’s been lucky enough to experience love, it just grabs hold of you. You don’t control how you feel, but you can choose what to do with it,” he told The New York Times. But like his Cyrano character, he says there’s always a feeling of unworthiness in the face of love. “When you meet somebody you love, they’re suddenly so important and so powerful that of course your go-to is, ‘I’m not worthy of this, because why would I be? This is so much bigger than me.’”
Next, find out if Peter Dinklage will score his first Oscar nod! The 2022 Oscar nominations are coming soon, and here’s everything we know about who may host, when they'll happen and more.
