His idols are the cool people who don’t strive to be cool — Smith, Lou Reed, Tobias Wolff and Sam Shepard.

His idols are the cool people who don’t strive to be cool — Smith, Lou Reed, Tobias Wolff and Sam Shepard.

“I smoked too much pot, stayed up too late, did a lot of plays, listened to a lot of Pixies and Dinosaur Jr.“

“I smoked too much pot, stayed up too late, did a lot of plays, listened to a lot of Pixies and Dinosaur Jr.“

Dinklage would also do a routine to “Send in the Clowns”: “I was in some sort of wig, but not dressed as a clown – I knew from an early age not to humiliate myself,” he says. “I was on a tricycle, and we played the entire song, and my whole part of the revue was to ride the tricycle and fall over, ride the tricycle and fall over, while these old people were sitting there.

It all started in a suburban New Jersey basement with some puppets, a tricycle and a double album by the Who. When Dinklage was six or seven, he and his older brother (now a successful violinist) would put on shows in their parents’ basement for “neighborhood elderly people. We’d do a puppet Quadrophenia,” Dinklage recalls, “set up little drum kits with tuna-fish cans and do a whole show and sell tickets for a bottle cap or whatever.