- I waited a long time out in the world
before I gave myself permission to fail.
You need a time in your life right after college
to suffer a little bit to keep you on your toes.
I think it's not so good to live in the past
or have the clarity of the past.
I'm guilty of being a dwarf.
- Hello, Believe Nation.
I'm Evan Carmichael.
My one word is believe
and I believe that entrepreneurs are going
to solve all of the major problems of the world.
So to help you on your journey, today we're going to learn
from Game of Thrones actor, Peter Dinklage,
and my take on his top ten rules for success.
Rule number one is my personal favorite
and I'd love to know which one you guys like the best.
And as always, guys, as you're watching,
if you hear something that really resonates with you,
please leave it down in the comments below.
Put quotes around it so other people can be inspired
and when you write it down,
it's much more likely to stick for yourself, as well.
Enjoy.
(uplifting music)
- When I was 29, I told myself the next acting job I get,
no matter what it pays, I will, from now on,
for better or worse, be a working actor.
So I quit my position at
the Professional Examination Services.
(audience laughing)
My friends really weren't happy about that
because it was so easy to find me when I worked there.
Work was the only place that I had the internet.
This was at the beginning of the internet.
(audience laughing)
And now I didn't have the either the internet
or a cell phone or a job.
(audience laughing)
But something good happened.
I got a low-paying theater job
in a play called Imperfect Love,
which led to a film called 13 Moons with the same writer,
which led to other roles, which led to other roles.
And I've worked as an actor ever since.
(audience cheering)
But I didn't know that would happen.
At 29, walking away from data processing,
I was terrified.
Ten years in a place without heat,
six years at a job I felt stuck in,
maybe I was afraid of change.
Are you?
My parents didn't have much money,
but they struggled to send me to the best schools.
And one of the most important things they did for me,
and graduates, maybe you don't want to hear this,
is that once I graduated, I was on my own.
Financially it was my turn.
(audience applauding)
Parents are applauding, graduates are not.
(audience laughing)
But this made me very hungry, literally.
(audience laughing)
I couldn't be lazy.
Now I'm totally lazy, but back then I couldn't be.
And so at 29 and at very long last,
I was in the company of the actors, and writers,
and directors I had sought out that first year,
that first day after school.
I was, I am, by their sides.
Raise the rest of your life to meet you.
Don't search for defining moments
because they will never come.
The world might say you are not allowed to yet.
I waited a long time out in the world
before I gave myself permission to fail.
Please don't even bother asking,
don't bother telling the world you are ready.
Show it.
Do it.
What did Beckett say?
Ever tried, ever failed, no matter.
Try again, fail again, fail better.
- I'm a writer so I'm kind of curious.
What type of scripts do you get coming your way
that you're tired of?
- Originality, I know that's a very,
but without it being aware that it's being original.
A lot of scripts are trying to be very original
and that they're so self-aware.
I think we're living nowadays in a meta society
and we can't help ourselves in that.
And I think a lot of it manifests a lot
in scripts that I read.
Like they're, Charlie Kaufman, for example,
he came into this world and he wrote those movies
and since Charlie, people have tried
to be like Charlie's movies, you know.
They've sort of tried to follow that form.
But it's not their own, it's Charlie's.
And sort of follow your own, take your own path,
write what's true to you and no one else,
and then it will be wholly original.
That's what I look for.
- When you grew older, you moved to Brooklyn
and in those days, Brooklyn was Brooklyn.
- Yeah. - It's different now.
- Williamsburg in the early nineties.
- What was your life like over there?
- Terrible. - Really?
(audience laughing)
- Yeah.
Well, I think you need a time in your life
right after college to suffer a little bit
to keep you on your toes.
But I remember I had this apartment
that didn't have any heat.
None of them ever had any heat back then.
We put up plastic on the windows in the winter.
Sort of like in here.
- [David Letterman] Yeah.
(laughing)
- I want to go into the future.
I think this, I don't know if I would use this machine
or relive any memories.
I think it's sort of, can be distractive.
That's my take away from it.
I don't know.
You would. - I would, yeah.
I would use the machine, yeah.
- I'm with you, I'm with you.
- Yeah, it's just interesting, yeah.
Would you use it?
- I think it's not so good to live in the past
or have the clarity of the past.
You should romanticize it.
That's what we do.
It's storytelling.
- [Interviewer] But Peter, this is the last season
of Game of Thrones.
Like, there's nothing you would miss?
Or you have a favorite memory of that?
- Ah, you got to move on.
You got to move on!
No, it's all about, it's all moving on.
It's all about moving on.
- You have people taking pictures,
especially in a place like this.
They just, they want the proof of a memory,
but they don't actually experience something to remember.
It's sort of strange, "Can I have your picture?"
And they don't really meet you
or it's just this sort of thing that happening now.
It's replacing an experience, a memory they will have.
Instead it's just a memory of a photo.
And I'm sure you start to apply
your own memory to that photo
and change the events and how they went down.
- What is the most important lesson
that you have learned in your course as professionals?
- I think with the culture we live in today,
the internet and web, and things, and the twitter,
and the gobbler, and the (gibberish).
You know, I think part of the reason why Marlon Brando
is who Marlon Brando was, why he was,
probably yes, to me, the greatest actor ever,
because we didn't really know too much about him
when he was younger and that left it very mysterious.
So we were able to get lost in his characters more.
But nowadays, there's so much knowledge
of everybody's personal life that you sort of can't get lost
in the characters they play.
So my professional thing that I've,
is just to shut up and less is more.
- Time and again we find that we have an innermost trend
of going back to basics.
Because today people complain that we have been
insulated for too long by digital technology,
too many special effects.
We want to, you know,
to have more real human characters in the movie.
What do you think?
- Well, yeah.
I mean, I kind of don't understand.
I mean, films from the Far East have always done it,
that I have seen, why can't an action movie
also be very heartbreaking and personal?
Why can't a horror film be very dramatic?
I feel like and sometimes in America we get
trapped by our genres and we don't overlap.
And I think that's unfortunate.
And something like this,
which has such science-fiction elements to it,
it also is a very deeply personal film
for a lot of these characters
and very dramatic and very sad and heartbreaking.
You get very emotional watching a film like this.
And you sort of forget that you're watching
a big summer blockbuster film.
I think it's, I find it kind of sad that
that's somewhat surprising
because writing has gotten so, sort of, formulaic.
Especially, I think, sorry, in television.
But you just got to push the envelope
and challenge people's expectations
and ideas of what's going to happen next.
And I think we do that.
And I think that adds to the addiction of the show.
You never know what's around the corner.
Well, she's beautiful.
All awards mean is that it's the people are,
it's just great.
In other words, you know, people loved what you did
and that's always means well, it means good.
Actors, I think, need a lot of confirmation (laughs)
for what they do.
I think that's why we have all these award shows.
It's just a movie we made for no money in 20 days
and it just feels good to get recognized
for something like that, you know.
We made the movie for half a million dollars
and we struggled to get it made.
And it's found an audience,
which we didn't know it was going to find.
You know, it's a very personal movie.
Tom McCarthy, the writer director, it's his first film
and he wrote it for the three lead actors
and then Miramax bought the film at Sundance
about a year and a half ago.
So it's been great.
It's been a crazy ride.
- I saved you.
I saved this city and all your worthless lives.
I should have let Stannis kill you all.
(jeering)
- Tyrion,
do you wish to confess?
- Yes, father, I'm guilty.
Guilty, is that what you want to hear?
- You admit you poisoned the king?
- No, of that I'm innocent.
I'm guilty of a far more monstrous crime.
I'm guilty of being a dwarf.
- You are not on trial for being a dwarf.
- Oh, yes I am.
I've been on trial for that my entire life.
- Have you nothing to say in your defense?
- Nothing but this, I did not do it.
I did not kill Joffrey, but I wish that I had.
Watching your vicious bastard die
gave me more relief than a thousand lying whores.
I wish I was the monster you think I am.
I wish I had enough poison for the whole pack of you.
I would gladly give my life to watch you all swallow it.
- Sir Meryn, Sir Meryn,
escort the prisoner back to his cell.
- I will not give my life for Joffrey's murder
and I know I'll get no justice here.
So I will let the gods decide my fate.
I demand a trial by combat.
(dramatic music)
(crowd yelling)
- Thank you guys so much for watching.
I made this video because Roderick asked me to.
So if there's a famous entrepreneur
that you want me to profile next,
check out the link in the description
and go and cast your vote.
I also want to give a quick shout out to Imran Dean.
Imran, thank you so much for picking up a copy
of my book, Your One Word
and posting that awesome picture on Instagram.
I really, really appreciate the support
and I'm glad that you enjoyed the read.
So thank you guys again for watching.
I believe in you.
I hope you continue to believe in yourself
and whatever your one word is.
Much love.
I'll see you soon.
- [Interviewer] Your career, when I look at
some of the roles you've had in the past,
the break out role people role people describe
as being in the movie The Station Agent a while back.
Even a big budget film like Elf,
where you played a very, sort of,
pugnacious children's publisher.
If that is an accurate description.
- [Peter Dinklage] Yes.
- [Interviewer] It seems like you've managed
to find the roles that upend
whatever those stereotypes might be.
- [Peter Dinklage] Yeah, well I try to, you know.
And I'm not always successful at it.
You do have to make a living.
And I do not fault anyone else who makes choices
to play characters that they wish they hadn't agreed to do.
'Cause at the end of the day,
none of us are happy with our jobs all the time.
But I just sort of, I had some perseverance,
in terms of what I wanted to do
and what I didn't want to do.
And I think no is a very powerful word in our business
that is very hard to use early on in your career.
But I also think I was pretty arrogant when I was younger.
So I use that word, maybe too much,
but it also helped me with the finding roles
that I did like.
- [Interviewer] What was the first time you stood on stage
and thought, I want to act and this the only thing I want to do?
- [Peter Dinklage] Oh, it was so many years ago.
I don't remember.
- [Interviewer] Oh, you're a baby, give me a break.
(laughing)
- [Peter Dinklage] Oh, I think a lot of us
are just little hams when we're children
and it just starts that way.
But, you know, my mom's a music school teacher
and kid's would come in,
it was a revolving door policy at our house,
growing up in New Jersey,
where piano lessons were given all day throughout the day,
and my brother and I would be putting on puppet shows
down in the basement,
and constructing these elaborate sets,
and putting on these shows for all the octogenarians
of the neighborhood...
(laughing)
that were kind enough to pay a nickel.
- [Interviewer] So the arts was sort of,
this was something in your background already.
- [Peter Dinklage] It just came at an early age, yeah.
I don't know when it starts.
When you trace it back to when you were a little child,
you can't really remember this big moment.
I think it's a lot of little moments that build up
into something that just forms who you are
and your need to be an actor.
- Can you just catch me up on what's happened so far
in the first few seasons of Game of Thrones?
- What?
We got a minute.
- We've got 45 seconds now.
- Stabby, stabby, stabby, stabby.
Sexy, sexy, sexy, stabby, stabby, stabby.
Beautiful, beautiful language
and beautiful scenes of poetry and musing
on the world as we know it in King's Landing
and then a couple jokes.
(laughing)
And more stabby, stabby.
(laughing)
(making sound effects)
I think one brother, sister (making sound effects).
- Wait, what's that?
What's that mean?
(making sound effects)
They were having parties, like a tea party?
- Yeah, they're going,
"Look at my fingers in a circle.
"Look at that."
- Sounds good. - Yeah, man.