Peter Dinklage has been one of my favorite actors since I first noticed him in The Station Agent. Most people only know him as the angry elf from Elf, but the guy has a serious career going as an actor. What’s great about Dinklage is that he doesn’t let his size define his roles. Even in Elf, where his entire scene is a gag about his height, he’s playing a guy who refuses to be defined by the fact that he needs a booster seat. So often when you talk about midget actors, you have to couch with “he’s a good midget actor”. It’s the kind of thing I always find myself saying about Warwick Davis for instance. But that’s just not true about Dinklage. He’s not just a great actor for his size, the guy is just a flat out great actor.

Now I’m about to wipe out about half of what I just said about him, because it looks like he’s being stuck in another one of those “reserved for little people” roles. Disney has just announced that Peter Dinklage has been cast to play Trumpkin the Dwarf in The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian. That’s great news for the Narnia sequel, because if you need someone Peter’s height (which they do), there really is no better actor working in Hollywood. But as a fan of Dinklage, man I just hate to see him go there. This is Warwick Davis’s territory. Not that there’s anything wrong with that and Trumpkin’s a pretty major role, but now Peter’s going to be known as that dwarf. Kind of a bummer, but then it’s probably not easy for him to get parts, no matter how good he is.

He’s not the only new addition to the cast of course. The movie starts shooting next week so we’re amidst a flurry of Narnia casting announcements. We just got done reporting that Alicia Borrachero has been cast as the wife of evil king Miraz and yesterday a British actor named Ben Barnes was rumored to be hired for Prince Caspian. In addition to Dinklage, Disney says they’ve also hired Vincent Grass for the critical role of Prince Caspian’s mentor Doctor Cornelius.