Peter Dinklage has steadfastly avoided the sorts of roles that Hollywood tends to offer an adult actor who is 4-foot-5.
Santa’s elves, evil leprechauns, hobbit doubles.
So it is meaningful that he is willingly decked out like a warrior garden gnome in The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, the second film based on C.S. Lewis’ seven-part book series.
Not even three hours of makeup each morning could discourage Dinklage as he was transformed into Trumpkin, the doubting red dwarf who joins the fight to reclaim Narnia.
“I’m not interested in doing something not fully fleshed out,” he says of his previous avoidance of such make-believe adventures. “Often, you get the hero and the villain and not much in between. Trumpkin is in between. He is not a lovable Snow White dwarf. Audiences appreciate these cynical characters. It helps parents and adults to go along with the journey.”
As director Andrew Adamson says, “Trumpkin is a great acerbic, curmudgeonly character.” After Disney production chief Oren Aviv looked at dailies last week, “He felt Peter was the heart and soul of the film.”
You can read the rest of the article at USA Today.
Further down the article, Anna Popplewell speaks a bit, about her role in the film as well:
As a father of two daughters ages 4½ and 2, Adamson made sure that the girls weren’t off to the side during the fighting but directly involved. “Susan really kicks (butt) in this film, and Lucy gets to use her dagger,” he says. “Georgie would have complained loudly if she hadn’t.”
Popplewell proudly notes, “I shoot lots of people with my arrows. We kept a sort of death count, and I reached 14 halfway through shooting.”
Not to worry. The film is still a family-safe PG.
Anyone who has read Caspian knows SPOILERS!that Susan and Peter are told by Aslan the lion that they are too old to visit Narnia again. The Dawn Treader, due in 2010, will set sail without them.END SPOILERS!
“We shot the scene near the end of filming, and it had a ring of truth to it,” Popplewell says. “It’s bittersweet. Yet, in some ways, it feels perfect.”
