Peter Dinklage has only ever done one audition in his life

Peter Dinklage has only ever done one audition in his life.

The 54-year-old actor — who is best known for playing the role of Tyrion Lannister on the HBO series Game of Thrones — stands at four feet five inches. He knew that, because of his height, he had a "very narrow window" for the parts he could go up for, so worked regular jobs whilst taking on the limited roles that fit him.

Speaking on the Bullseye podcast, he said: "I don't know how anyone survives [auditions]. But I was fortunate enough and — it's not being egotistical — but I had a very narrow window early on in my career about parts I could play.

"It was a while ago and people didn't really think outside the box in terms of casting someone like me. I didn't have any interest going out for things like that, I just had regular jobs that paid the bills. I'd rather do that and feel happy with my choices of the day."

"And then I did an audition for my first film Living in Oblivion, which was about the making of an independent movie. It has a bit of a cult following now and it was such a wonderful environment of independent filmmaking in New York. That was my first and only audition. But it didn't pave a golden path for me whatsoever, it was two weeks of work and then I went back to my day job."

Following his first audition, the Emmy Award-winning star went on a rotation of working jobs simply to "pay the bills" until after a decade he vowed to give that up in search of a full-time career and, as luck would have it, director Alexandre Rockwell was in the audience of a play he was starring in and he immediately snapped him up for his next big project.

He said: "Then it was like 10 more years of theatre, and day jobs and independent films to pay the bills. It was a really narrow casting thing for me. There were just a few things… or, if a friend, a couple of friends of mine who are independent filmmakers, they would write a part of me because they thought I was funny.

"But then I did a play downtown on Chambers Street in an old bank, another US$200-a-week (S$270 job, and for some reason — I was closing in on 30, I was about 28 — I said, 'This is the last, I'm gonna become an actor now, I'm gonna have trust and faith in what I'm doing,' and when I did that, a guy called Alexandre Rockwell saw the play.

"He was a friend of the writers, we did a movie called 13 Moons and then suddenly I became a working actor.

"It wasn't an easy street but I was able to pay the bills in expensive New York City."

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