IT’S GOOD TO BE PETER DINKLAGE these days, it really is – beautiful new baby, happy marriage, house up in the mountains, sweet Game of Thrones gig, the whole -triumph-against-the-odds thing that his acting career has become. (Though he’s hesitant to fully acknowledge the last bit: “I triumphed because I’m odd?”) There isn’t much left to complain about, not that he ever did much of that – his parents never moved anything from the high shelves in their house, just expected him to get on with it, to climb up for what he wanted, and that’s what he’s always done. There’s just one lingering annoyance: Out in public, Dinklage can’t hide. “I can’t be anonymous,” he says, “because of my size” (which, to be precise, is four feet five). Hats and sunglasses don’t help; neither did the wild-woodsman’s beard he had going until last week. “Even if they don’t recognize him,” says his wife, theater director Erica Schmidt, “they think he’s Wee Man from Jackass or they think he’s the guy from In Bruges. So there’s a constant assault.” Before Dinklage and his family moved from Manhattan to rural upstate New York earlier this year, the unending attention – mostly pleasant, sometimes frighteningly aggressive – was wearing him down.

Up here, life is easier. His five-month-old baby can have her own room – which, he says, is bigger than their entire old West Village apartment. (“She’s beautiful,” he jokes of his daughter. “I wonder who the father is.”) Dinklage’s big mutt of a dog, Kevin, can run with him each morning through the woods behind the house, where they dodge Lyme-disease-ridden ticks instead of cameraphone-toting tourists. His wife’s career means they’ll likely have to move back to the city eventually (“The list of people happy here is probably my dog, me, the baby, then my wife – from happiest to least happiest”), but right now, Dinklage is savoring the quiet.

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