Peter Dinklage covers the new issue of Esquire, likely to promote the fourth season of Game of Thrones, but I bet he’s also doing some advanced press for X-Men: Days of Future Past, where he plays the bad guy. You can read the excerpt that Esquire put online here. It reads like the first half or the first third of a deeper, more intense profile, all moody and New Yorky. There’s a discussion about height and presidents and whether Peter would confirm his actual height to the reporter. He talks about how much he loves New York, except the fan encounters can really get to him. Then he tells this story (and I’m not editing this section at all):

He rests his cheeks in his not-unlarge hands and shakes his head. “Sometimes the encounters can be meaningful,” he offers, trying a different spin.

He rubs his stubbled goatee. “One morning,” after his breakout role in The Station Agent (2003), “I was walking down Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles. There was this guy on a motorcycle right in front of me—about as far away as that plant, maybe six feet? And he looked at me. He didn’t wave, but he looked at me, and then he pulled out into traffic and this car, like, boom—killed him instantly.”

And you were the last person he saw?

“Yes. I was the last person he saw on earth.”

And you connected with him.

“And I connected with him. And then he pulled out into traffic and boom. There was an old guy driving the car. I ran into this coffee shop that I’d been on my way to. They had somebody call an ambulance. And then I ran back outside to be with the guy, but he was already dead. I didn’t want to get too near him. The old guy had stopped and he was slowly getting out of his car. It was in the morning, so there was no one around, you know? This was in L. A., where nobody walks. It was empty. So there was this quiet moment where it was like I was the only person in the world who knew this guy was dead. And I was there looking at him, you know, in those moments of calm after something horrible happens, the calm before the melee starts, before the ambulances and the cops arrive and it becomes a scene. There was that moment when I was with him.”

He raises his photogenic chin, contemplating the immediate heavens, the vicissitudes of fate, his face turned away from the window. I can’t help but think of Tyrion Lannister delivering one of his rich monologues, a conflicted modern thinker among the primitives, a pragmatist with a deep well of melancholy.

“There’s such a difference with dying,” Dinklage says. “You can have somebody who is really sick for a long time. Like, my father had cancer for many years and he passed away. He was too young. He was in his seventies, which is too young. But there’s something different between an older person dying and this guy. He was probably about twenty-five. He’d probably just had breakfast at the same place I was headed. And then he died. It’s like, he was robbed.”

We sit for a few moments, sipping our coffees. He eats some cheese and apple off the plate but skips the bread. The passing show continues past.

Then it pops into my head, so I ask: Do you think you might have distracted him?

Dinklage’s eyes saucer. His face contorts into a hideous mask.

“No, no, no, no!” he cries, raising his hands defensively, as if to fend off the notion. “No! I never felt like that! NOT AT ALL.”

Just wondered, you know, given the—

“Oh, my God! F–k you. How dare—Oh, Mike. I never thought of that before. This was supposed to be a story about how I actually connected with a stranger. Oh, f–k. Oh, man. Dude!”

I’m so sorry. It just seemed—

“It’s over. This is over! I’m gonna have nightmares tonight. I’m Catholic, remember?”

[From Esquire]

Is it wrong that I also thought, “Huh, I wonder if the kid was paying attention to Dinklage instead of the road?” But I wouldn’t have said it to him! That’s bad ju-ju. Besides, there’s nothing Peter Dinklage could have done, you know? People notice him. They make eye contact. They love him because of GoT. Unless we’re saying that Peter just needs to never walk on the sidewalk lest he distract passersby, I don’t know what else he could have done. But seriously, Dinklage must have lots of strange stories. Some people just attract weirdness. Dinklage is like that. Jeremy Renner is another.

Photos courtesy of Esquire.