Peter Dinklage returns this week in Cyrano, an all-singing, all-dancing movie adaptation of Edmond Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac, and he's already snagged a Golden Globe nomination for his performance. To whet your appetite, we're shining a spotlight on this brilliant actor who won four Emmy awards for playing Tyrion Lannister on Game of Thrones. So, here are a few interesting things that you may not know about him yet.
1. He didn't say yes to Game of Thrones straight away
"I had one hesitation, because of the fantasy genre," Dinklage revealed during a Reddit AMA.  "I told [co-creator David Benioff] I didn’t want a really long beard and pointy shoes, and they assured me this character and this world wasn't that. They told me about his complexity, the fact that he wasn’t a hero or a villain, that he was a womanizer and a drinker, and they painted a flawed and beautiful portrait of him, so I signed on."
2. There's a good reason why he didn't do too many fight scenes in Game of Thrones.
Namely, the fact he's not exactly a "fighter guy," as he explained during his recent appearance on The Graham Norton Show.

3. Back in the '90s, he was the singer in an NYC-based "punk-funk-rap band" called Whizzy.
And Dinklage definitely served rock star energy on stage. "I have a pretty big scar that runs from my neck to my eyebrow," Dinklage recalled during a Playboy interview. "We played a show at CBGB, and I was jumping around onstage and got accidentally kneed in the temple. I was like Sid Vicious, just bleeding all over the stage. Blood was going everywhere. I just grabbed a dirty bar napkin and dabbed my head and went on with the show. We didn't care much at the time about personal safety."
You can check out some very evocative photos of Whizzy in action over on NME.
4. His brother Jonathan Dinklage is a professional musician. 
And a very accomplished one – he's the concertmaster for Hamilton on Broadway, and until recently was also the concertmaster for Matilda the Musical.
5. He's always turned down roles that rely on toxic stereotypes about his height.
According to a New York Times profile, at one point in his career, Dinklage decided he'd rather continue eating potato chips for dinner every night than play one of Santa's elves in a Kmart commercial.
6. He knows exactly why there are so few roles for people of his size.
"Oh, I have a great sense of why that is," Dinklage told Vulture. "It's because the odds are that a writer is not writing for someone my size. One in 30,000 people or whatever has this condition, and writers are just writing characters that they know from other movies. Whether that’s continuing a stereotype or challenging anything — it is what it is."
7. Growing up in New Jersey, he had a few brushes with Bruce Springsteen.
"I was born in Bay Head, New Jersey, and his manager lived next door to us," Dinklage told Playboy. "Bruce used to come over to his house and hang out and play guitar. This was when I was two, so I don’t remember any of it. My mom and dad went to a wedding at a surfboard factory, and Bruce was in the wedding band. He was about 17 years old at the time. My mom didn't think he was that great. She told me he was too loud."
8. His Game of Thrones co-star Charles Dance (who played Tywin Lannister) didn't like scenes where he had to be mean to Dinklage's character.
"I spend a lot of time with Peter Dinklage and he's the most adorable man," Dance said at the season three launch attended by Digital Spy. "After all those scenes, I apologize to him every time."

9. He absolutely loved living in Belfast while working on Game of Thrones.
"It meant so much to me working on that show and living in Ireland," Dinklage told The Irish Times recently. "It’s hard to delineate between the life of that and the role, and the show. So that definitely has had the most impact on me. Belfast was my home away from home. I miss it terribly.”
10. His mom told him he wasn't going to win a Golden Globe in 2012... shortly before he won it.
"I was talking to my mother in Jersey before I came out and she said, 'Have fun, but have you seen Mildred Pierce? Guy Pearce is so good, he's gonna win,'" Dinklage said at the time, according to Digital Spy. "I just love our moms 'cause they keep us humble."
Have we missed out something interesting about Peter Dinklage?